Visualization in Decision Support for Sustainability: Strengths and Weaknesses

Decision makers today, from science to policy and on scales from local to global, require clarity of issues and possible response options.  This is both increasingly critical and increasingly difficult given the complexity and uncertainty inherent to issues in the emerging arena of global sustainability.  By exploring two case studies — collaborative efforts in water planning in arid regions of the US in the face of climate change and crisis preparedness for pandemic influenza in urban environments— we will describe a systems approach to decision making that embraces trans-boundary aspects, including multiple pathways for the translation and visualization of relevant research results given input from key decision makers. We will describe the use of the Decision Theater at Arizona State University, a unique “boundary organization” and decision laboratory that combines collaboration, a sustainability and decision-science approach and data translation and visualization, to define and explore Decision Making Environments, Decision Making Frameworks and the application to more effective Decision Support Systems and tools all aimed at a sustainable future.