Using Sound to Represent Positional Accuracy of Address Locations

Uncertainty data is often ignored by spatial data users, for a number of reasons including difficulty of comprehension and limited methods of display. An extension to ArcGIS was created to allow the positional accuracy of address locations to be represented sonically using piano notes. This was evaluated by 49 spatial data users during a computerbased evaluation and subsequent discussion sessions. Two factors that had a significant impact on successful interpretation were the proportion of the attribute under investigation in the data and the presentation method. Knowledge of the data source also appeared important. Future studies will broaden the applications to include climate scenario data and virtual reality visualisations of future landscapes, as well as different aspects of sound.