Visualizing Uncertainty for Improved Decision Making

Decision making often depends on the analysis and evaluation of large amounts of data for which information visualization proved to be a valuable approach. The recognition of uncertainty in the data is crucial and it should therefore be appropriately represented. However, suitable methods for its visualization are in many cases not available. This paper provides a general view on uncertainty with respect to a widely accepted information model. Out of this view it explains why the recognition of uncertainty plays an important role for decisions, and it depicts available but especially missing visualization concepts today, e.g. for the display of uncertain relationships. To fill that gap new ideas are derived for an improved visual decision support.