VISUALIZING UNCERTAINTY IN PREDICTED HURRICANE TRACKS
Authors:
Open Access
- 1 January 2013
- journal article
- Published by Begell House Inc. Publishers in International Journal for Uncertainty Quantification
- Vol. 3 (2) , 143-156
Abstract
The error cone is a display produced by the National Hurricane Center in order to present its predictions of the path of a hurricane. While the error cone is one of the primary tools used by officials, and the general public, to make emergency response decisions, the uncertainty underlying this display can be easily misunderstood. This paper explores the design of an alternate display that provides a continually updated set of possible hurricane tracks, whose ensemble distribution closely matches the underlying statistics of a hurricane prediction. We explain the underlying algorithm and data structures, and demonstrate how our displays compare with the error cone. Finally, we review the design and results of a user study that we conducted as a preliminary test of the efficacy of our approach in communicating prediction uncertainty.Keywords
This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit:
- Results of a User Study on 2D Hurricane VisualizationComputer Graphics Forum, 2008
- Visualizing Uncertainty in Natural Hazards2008