The impact of user expertise on geographic risk assessment under uncertain conditions

This research addressed the impact that expertise has on the use of uncertain geographic information for assessing the flooding risk of sites in the landscape. An online survey was developed and administered to fifty-six participants to collect initial insight into possible differences between experts and novices. In the survey, participants were required to assess the risk of an identified site relative to three delineations of the floodplain, each carrying a different degree of certainty, and then report their perceived difficulty in making the assessment and their confidence in the assessment. The responses were examined across three definitions of expertise (education/training, work experience, and self-reported) and in two realms of expertise (domain and map use). Analysis found that user confidence is affected by expertise in both domain and map use expertise, but that it is domain expertise that most impacts the risk assessment itself and map use expertise that most impacts the perceived difficulty of the risk assessment.