Integrated information visualization to support decision-making in order to strengthen communities: Design and usability evaluation

ABSTRACT

Community well-being refers to the qualities of an optimally healthy community life. This is the ultimate goal of all the various processes and strategies created to meet the needs of people living together in communities. We propose a holistic integrated visualization, in the form of a community well-being assessment system, as a web-based advanced tool to be used by the executive and health officers of the sub-district administration organization (SAO) network to improve decision-making in order to strengthen their communities. Data were obtained from the Family and Community Assessment Program (FAP) and the SAO in nine sub-districts, covering all of the four regions of Thailand. The system incorporates dashboard architecture and assists the executive and health officers in the SAO to achieve better decision-making for the deployment of proper measures in communities. The model was developed for the Pakpoon SAO and was applied to the other eight SAOs. In order to evaluate the model, 243 users, covering all user groups from three sites, were asked to answer 18 questions during a meeting. The overall average score for user satisfaction was 4.12. The results indicate that this model can be used for community well-being assessment, in order to improve decision-making to strengthen communities in Thailand.

KEYWORDS:

• Community health planning
• community well-being
• dashboard
• decision support systems
• geographic information systems

Acknowledgments

We thank John Barker, Thana Na Nagara and two anonymous referees for comments on previous versions of this manuscript, and Urai Jaraprapal and the Centre of Excellence for Ecoinformatics, Walailak University, for knowledge support. We also thank village agents and health officers for their collaboration with this project.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Funding

Financial support was obtained from the Pakpoon Sub-district Administration Organisation, Chevron (Thailand) Limited, and the Southern College of Technology.

Additional information

Funding

Financial support was obtained from the Pakpoon Sub-district Administration Organisation, Chevron (Thailand) Limited, and the Southern College of Technology.