An analysis of specialist and non-specialist user requirements for geographic climate change information

Abstract

Citation: MAGUIRE, M., 2013. An analysis of specialist and non-specialist user requirements for geographic climate change information. Applied Ergonomics, 44 (6), pp. 874 885. This item was submitted to Loughborough's Institutional Repository (https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/) by the author and is made available under the following Creative Commons Licence conditions.For the full text of this licence, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ 1 An analysis of specialist and non-specialist user requirements for geographic climate change information Martin C. Maguire Loughborough Design School, Loughborough University, Ashby Road, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK m.c.maguire@lboro.ac.uk ABSTRACTThe EU EuroClim project developed a system to monitor and record climate change indicator data based on satellite observations of snow cover, sea ice and glaciers in Northern Europe and the Arctic. It also contained projection data for temperature, rainfall and average wind speed for Europe. These were all stored as data sets in a GIS database for users to download. The process of gathering requirements for a user population including scientists, researchers, policy makers, educationalists and the general public is described. Using an iterative design methodology, a user survey was administered to obtain initial feedback on the system concept followed by panel sessions where users were presented with the system concept and a demonstrator to interact with it. The requirements of both specialist and nonspecialist users is summarised together with strategies for the effective communication of geographic climate change information.Keywords: climate change; geographic information; graphical representation; user needs IntroductionClimate change can affect the living conditions of people worldwide. Dramatic changes may occur with the weather becoming more extreme, along with greater frequency of flooding, droughts and hurricanes. It is not known whether northern Europe will experience regional cooling or warming in a future warmer world. A report by the UK Climate Impacts Programme (Chapman, 2002) states that summer temperatures in the UK, for instance, could regularly reach 40°C (104°F) by the year 2080 as global warming appears to gather pace. Prince Charles called climate change the "greatest challenge to face man" (Mukherjee, 2005) while it is also observed that sea-ice is retreating dramatically in the autumn as well as the summer months (Amos, 2013). The potential effects of climate change are brought home by powerful images of sea level rise, coastal erosion, drought, displacement of people and changes in the habitat of wildlife. These developments are documented officially by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (http://www.ipcc.ch).To support climate change research, there is a need for current data from the environment. Satellite monitoring of climate change indicators such as sea ice, snow and glaciers in Northern Europe and the Arctic is one source. This paper presents the results of...

Requirements elicitation techniques: a systematic literature review based on the maturity of the techniques

“…A relevant aspect that is worth highlighting is that in 24 of the 109 studies (∼22%) more than one requirements elicitation technique was used [44–46, 48, 51, 52, 56, 59, 61, 69, 70, 77, 79, 87, 94, 99, 104–106, 112, 120, 132, 136, 153].…”