Improving Design and Usability of Interactive Vulnerability Mapping Tools for Global Health Preparedness

Abstract

The ability of organizations and governments to anticipate disease outbreak risks and respond to emergent threats, commonly known as global health preparedness, presents both a challenging opportunity and an urgent imperative for public health informatics interventions. An example is the need to address the public health risks of vector-borne and zoonotic disease (VBZD) outbreaks, as understanding and preparing for such multifactorial events involves the careful integration of human, animal, entomological, environmental, and infrastructure data. The integration, presentation, and understanding of this data, and associated risks, demands usable tools and technology. Visualization can be a useful way to apply systems thinking to such problems. Unfortunately, existing visualization tools frequently do not assess whether they meet the needs of their users and do not incorporate best practices championed by human centered design (HCD). In my dissertation research, I propose design recommendations for visualization tools to help decision makers in global health preparedness identify spatial areas that are vulnerable to outbreaks, meaning better awareness in areas at a relatively high risk for VBZD outbreaks and a lower capacity to contain spread.Spatial Systems for Decision Support (SSDS) are a type of visualization tool that enable public health practitioners to make critical decisions informed by timely access to pertinent, analyzed data. In my research, I propose a new type of SSDS, interactive vulnerability mapping tools. This new tool can provide critical, rapid support to decision makers and practitioners in global health. Decision makers include epidemiologists, public health planners, vector control specialists, and directors, each of whom might use this information to allocate vaccine resources or plan intervention activities to high-risk regions. In my dissertation research, I have applied principles of human-centered design (HCD) and data visualization to design and evaluate the usability of interactive vulnerability mapping tools for dengue vulnerability in Peru (Aim 1) and Rift Valley fever vulnerability in Kenya (Aim 2). To situate my Aims 1 and 2 in the context of existing literature, I conducted a scoping review of interactive vulnerability mapping tools for VBZD preparedness (Aim 3) that describes current literature by characterizing data, users, technology, and use cases. I then compare findings from Aims 1 and 2 to the existing literature to identify gaps and inform design recommendations for future work. This work contributes: 1) usable interactive vulnerability mapping tools designed with public health decision makers in Peru and Kenya; 2) empirical data on the design, data visualization preferences, usability, and acceptance of interactive vulnerability mapping tools for VBZD vulnerability in global health settings; and 3) design recommendations for interactive mapping tools for VBZD informed by a scoping review of the literature and findings from Aims 1 and 2. This research will advance the fields of global health and pandemic preparedness, human computer interaction, and data visualization. It provides evidence to suggest that interactive vulnerability mapping tools hold the potential to more effectively prepare for and prevent VBZD outbreaks when they are designed and evaluated with purposeful user engagement.