Rapid access to geospatial information is crucial in crisis situations when decision makers need to work collaboratively. Geographic Information Systems ( GIS) and related geoinformation technologies have become important tools for crisis management but most systems remain hard to use and do not support collaborative group work. Our research group has developed speech and gesture-based user interfaces for large screen and mobile devices to support aspects of same/different-time and same/different-place collaboration involving geospatial information. At the current stage, large screen and mobile computers provide a variety of data querying, navigating and drawing functions targeted to crisis management activities. Gestures and natural speech allow users to express GIS-based requests that are closely tied to crisis management tasks. The speech and gesture-based collaborative tools are developed with domain experts (field workers, emergency responders, decision makers, etc.) from local and state agencies. Usability tests have already improved the development of robust stationary and mobile tools supporting group work and decision making with geospatial data during highly volatile crisis management situations.
Sven Fuhrmann is working as research faculty at the Penn State GeoVISTA Center. His research emphasis is on designing novel useful and usable Geographic Information Systems and Geovisualization Systems for specific domains. He received a bachelor degree in Cartography from the Salem State College, a master's degree in Geography and a PhD in Geoinformatics from the University of Muenster in Germany.