ABSTRACT
Geo Information Technology (GIT) and Geo Information Systems (GIS) for visualizing qualitative and quantitative risk analyses are of interest in the areas of large-scale events from disaster scenarios like forest fires and river flooding, to urban scenarios concerning urban security assessment and planning of future cities and quarters as well as military settings like overflight scenarios of moving hazard sources. The paper gives an overview of the range of applications of such 2D, 2.5D GIS and 3D visualizations as well as software tools employed within quantitative risk analyses. The main aim of the paper is to find key criteria for the selection of a suitable visualization for computer-supported risk analyses. We consider different scenario sizes, e.g. from airports to large-scale over flight scenarios with rockets. We distinguish static and dynamic scenarios, e.g. hazard propagation or changes in person distribution. A further criterion for the assessment of the suitability of visualization techniques and tools for quantitative risk analyses is whether GIS and visualization data can be used for risk modeling within one software tool, or more generally, how good the data exchange between the visualization and the modeling can be organized. In summary, we propose for computer-supported quantitative risk analyses applications suitable 3D and GIS visualizations. As basis for the investigation we use a subset of existing, emerging and future risk analysis application tools that are currently developed and take also our software technical framework and development conditions into account.
