Visualization in Resource Allocation Tasks

Allocation of resources whether man power or tools are ubiquitous tasks in factories hospitals airline and communication network companies It is also an example of many decision making problems involving complex and changing criteria It presents unusual challenges to information systems both from modeling and problem solving points of view This paper presents an application of information visualization techniques in the resource re allocation domain and in particular ight rescheduling In collaboration with Swissair our work concentrates on human computer problem solving and how visualization techniques can help users perceive the entire solution space in four abstraction models in order to make the right decision We present a technique called coordinated visualization In the following text we describe the domain followed by a task analysis of the ight rescheduling problem We then focus on the method of coordinated visualization and discuss how that achieves the goal of helping users perform tradeo s in decision making