Visually-enabled Geocollaboration to Support Data Exploration & Decision-making

Current mapping and related geospatial technologies are not designed to support group work and we have a limited theoretical or practical basis from which to extend (or reinvent) technologies for group use of geospatial information. To address the challenge of supporting group work with geospatial information, we have developed a comprehensive conceptual approach to geocollaboration and are applying that approach to a range of prototype systems that support both sameand different-place group activities. Our focus in this paper is on same-time, same-place group work environments that mediate distributed thinking and decision-making through use of large-screen displays supporting multi-user, natural interaction. Two environments will be described and compared. Both make use of hand gestures as a mechanism for specifying display locations. One adopts a white board metaphor while the other adopts a drafting table metaphor. We also consider two use cases: group data exploration (by scientists and analysts) and group decision-making (by crisis managers and planners).