Weighing decisions: Aiding emergency response decision making via option awareness

Emergency response is an especially challenging domain for decision support, as often high-impact decisions must be made quickly, usually under high levels of uncertainty about the situation. The level of uncertainty and the time pressure require a new approach to using model-based decision support tools during ongoing emergency events. This paper discusses the latest in a series of experiments examining the use of a decision-space visualization helping users identify the most robust options in response to complex emergency scenarios. The results provide additional insight into the value of decision-space information and option awareness for users working in complex, emerging, and uncertain task environments.