Crisis Map Design Considering Map Cognition

Ping Du,Xiaoxia Yang,Tao Liu,Dingkai Li,Yikun Li,Liming Zhang

doi:10.3390/ijgi10100692

Abstract

Crisis maps play a significant role in emergency responses. Users are challenged to interpret a map rapidly in emergencies, with limited visual information-processing resources and under time pressure. Therefore, cartographic techniques are required to facilitate their map cognition. In this study, we analyzed the exogenous and endogenous disruptions that users needed to overcome when they were reading maps. The analysis results suggested that cartographers’ taking the stressors into consideration could promote the cognitive fit between cartographers and users, improving map cognition and spatial information supply–demand matching. This paper also elaborates the course of map visual information processing and related graphic variables to visual attention attributes. To improve the users’ map cognition in time-critical emergency situations, crisis map design principles and a methodology were proposed. We developed three fire emergency rescue road maps and performed two evaluations to verify the effectiveness of the principles. Our experiments showed that the principles could effectively facilitate the users’ rapid map perception and proper understanding, by reducing their cognitive load, and could improve the quality of the crisis maps to some extent.

Highlights

Maps are important because they have the potential to represent large amounts of information regarding an area of interest within a single frame and in a comprehensible manner [1]
Crisis maps are a special type of thematic map
We studied the design of crisis map from the perspective of map cognition

Summary

Introduction

Maps are important because they have the potential to represent large amounts of information regarding an area of interest within a single frame and in a comprehensible manner [1]. It is critical to share and understand complex spatial, thematic, and temporal information in a timely, visual, and compelling way [2]. Crisis maps are often generated during an event and must be interpreted quickly under pressure [3]. They are special-purpose thematic maps on which objects, phenomena, or actions specific to crisis management are highlighted using appropriate cartographic symbols and represented according to their importance [4]. As practical tools in crisis response, maps have intuitive, informative, well-targeted, and topic-prominent characters, providing the users with adequate visualization supports for situation analysis, decision-making, and risk communication.

Methods

Results

Conclusion