Visual decision support for policy making: Advancing policy analysis with visualization

Todays politicians are confronted with new information technologies to tackle complex decision-making problems. In order to make sustainable decisions, a profound analysis of societal problems and possible solutions (policy options) needs to be performed. In this policy-analysis process, different stakeholders are involved. Besides internal direct advisors of the policy makers (policy analysts), external experts from different scientific disciplines can support evidence-based decision making. Despite the alleged importance of scientific advice in the policy-making process, it is observed that scientific results are often not used. In this work, a concept is described that supports the collaboration between scientists and politicians. We propose a science-policy interface that is realized by including information visualization in the policy-analysis process. Therefore, we identify synergy effects between both fields and introduce a methodology for addressing the current challenges of science-policy interfaces with visualization. Finally, we describe three exemplary case studies carried out in European research projects that instantiate the concept of this approach.