Evaluation of Multi-Level Cognitive Maps for Supporting Between-Floor Spatial Behavior in Complex Indoor Environments

People often become disoriented when navigating in complex, multi-level buildings. To efficiently find destinations located on different floors, navigators must refer to a globally coherent mental representation of the multi-level environment, which is termed a multi-level cognitive map. However, there is a surprising dearth of research into underlying theories of why integrating multi-level spatial knowledge into a multi-level cognitive map is so challenging and error-prone for humans. This overarching problem is the core motivation of this dissertation. We address this vexing problem in a two-pronged approach combining study of both basic and applied research questions. Of theoretical interest, we investigate questions about how multi-level built environments are learned and structured in memory. The concept of multi-level cognitive maps and a framework of multi-level cognitive map development are provided. We then conducted a set of empirical experiments to evaluate the effects of several environmental factors on users’ development of multi-level cognitive maps. The findings of these studies provide important design guidelines that can be used by architects and help to better understand the research question of why people get lost in buildings. Related to application, we investigate questions about how to design user-friendly visualization interfaces that augment users’ capability to form multi-level cognitive maps. An important finding of this dissertation is that increasing visual access with an X-ray-like visualization interface is effective for overcoming the disadvantage of limited visual access in built environments and assists the development of multi-level cognitive maps. These findings provide important human-computer interaction (HCI) guidelines for visualization techniques to be used in future indoor navigation systems. In sum, this dissertation adopts an interdisciplinary approach, combining theories from the fields of spatial cognition, information visualization, and HCI, addressing a long-standing and ubiquitous problem faced by anyone who navigates indoors: why do people get lost inside multi-level buildings. Results provide both theoretical and applied levels of knowledge generation and explanation, as well as contribute to the growing field of real-time indoor navigation systems

Indoor navigation map design based on the analysis of space characteristics

The application scope of geographical information science is gradually evolving from large-scale to small-scale environments (Afyouni et al., 2010). The space that we are dealing with is no longer limited to outdoor spaces but is extended to indoor spaces. Facing the indoor structure of complex buildings, the demand for indoor location services such as navigation and emergency evacuation services is increasing. Indoor navigation maps are an important tool for people to arrive at their destination in large public buildings. There are a lot of indoor navigation services to help mobile users but there are still some gaps between map design and the navigation process, such as how to model the path of the multi-dimensional structure of indoor environments, quantify the visibility condition of indoor areas, and compensate for the lack of semantic annotation of indoor corridors (e.g., there are typically no road signs as in the outdoor case). Most existing application studies focus on indoor maps that visualize the basic indoor spatial structures, while few take into account the navigation process in buildings. From the scientific perspective, there are a lot of aspects for designing indoor navigation maps (e.g., 2D/3D, visibility, and semantics). However, it is unclear which type of design is most effective for aiding pedestrians in indoor wayfinding. There has been some research on the design and representation of indoor maps. Nossum (2011) proposed a "Tubes" map representation method, which overlays the access information of different floors on the same plane, allowing users to understand the structure of each floor inside a building with the help of only one map. Li et al. (2013) studied indoor maps with multiple modes of representation on mobile terminals. They pointed out that both 2D and 3D maps significantly improved pointing and vertical navigation accuracy compared to the control condition with no map assistance, and argued that better visualization of the layered structure of the building could facilitate multi-level cognitive map development. The indoor space has special characteristics as the building space is divided by numerous walls and rooms, which limit the user's visual reach and hinder the overall perception of the space. In the process of indoor navigation, relevant studies have provided auxiliary guidance information for turns and specific decision points, adding guidance images, text, and symbols to convey information to users (De et al., 2019). It is also necessary to provide good navigational aids for areas with poor visibility. For example, Pang et al. (2021) generated an indoor visibility map based on a navigation network in corridor space. There are no names for the passages in an indoor space, but there are some landmarks, which are important elements for people to communicate route information, either verbally or graphically, and can assist pedestrians in making route decisions when they are at a fork along a path (May et al., 2003). In both outdoor and indoor environments, landmarks are generally selected considering the visual, semantic, and structural salience of the objects (Zhu et al., 2021; Zhou et al., 2022). Different from outdoor landforms, residential areas, water systems, vegetation, and other elements, indoor spaces are mainly artificially constructed entities. Indoor space elements refer to all the physical elements existing in the actual space, which describe the frame structure and local details of the indoor space. In map visualization, some elements are generally selected for mapping according to the map form, the specific purpose of the map, or the specific users (Ryder, 2015). According to the importance of the elements to the visualization of an indoor navigation map, the elements that are not salient enough for user attention and that have little or even interfering effects on reflecting the indoor navigation should be discarded

The role of cognitive maps in familiarity and wayfinding

Wayfinding is a difficult task that can be broken down into the interaction of a user with spatial information. It has been found that participants that are familiar with an environment are more successful at wayfinding than those that are not. It has also been found that participants that are familiar with an environment give wayfinding descriptions differently. This poster begins to examine familiarity in terms of the cognitive map. By exploring the formation of a cognitive map over time we can begin to examine the relationship between the cognitive map, familiarity with an environment, and wayfinding success. This poster outlines an experimental design for future work that examines these three areas togethe

Using multi-stakeholder causal mapping to explore priorities for infrastructure resilience to flooding

Urban resilience to natural hazards could make our cities less vulnerable to adverse weather events. However, the implementation of resilience actions is currently not effective, as mechanisms to facilitate collaboration among involved stakeholders are missing. This paper for the first time explores causal mapping as a method to disassemble major issues of urban resilience into a more manageable understanding, and thus identify key objectives, barriers and opportunities in thinking “resilient cities”. In this study, a cognitive-mapping-based workshop was held to elicit information from stakeholders in the remit of urban resilience to flooding. The statements and connections identified during the workshop led a consolidated map, analysed using the StrategyFinder software. This analysis highlighted barriers related to data availability, silo-based approaches and lack of funding; it also evidenced shared goals, such as the need to protect the built environment and minimise impact from flooding. Overall, causal mapping resulted a powerful analytical tool for improving understanding of the complex dynamics of urban resilience, identifying key variables and relationships, as well as eliciting information from stakeholders. Furthermore, this approach facilitated systems thinking, communication and collaboration. This enhanced understanding is fundamental for advancing strategies for future planning, contributing to urban sustainability and liveability

COMMUNICATING MULTILEVEL EVACUATION CONTEXT USING SITUATED AUGMENTED REALITY

Emergency preparedness is a fundamental component of a successful emergency management strategy. This includes a proactive communication strategy that informs all stakeholders of the emergency plan and helps translate that knowledge to real spaces. Communicating multilevel built environments can be difficult, as the architectural complexity creates problems for both visual and mental representations of networks in 3D space. Modern mobile technology offers emerging opportunities for emergency managers to develop and deploy 3D visualizations of multilevel spaces that preserve the topology of those spaces while adding the spatial context that allows the individual to better understand their position within it. In this paper, we present a collection of mixed reality (specifically augmented reality) geovisualizations that overcome the visual limitations associated with the traditional static 2D methods of communicating the evacuation plans of multilevel structures. We demonstrate how this technology can provide spatially contextualized 3D geovisualizations that promote spatial knowledge acquisition and support cognitive mapping. These geovisualizations are designed as a proactive emergency management tool to educate and prepare at risk populations prior to the occurrence of a hazardous event

Spatial Relations and Natural-Language Semantics for Indoor Scenes

Over the past 15 years, there have been increased efforts to represent and communicate spatial information about entities within indoor environments. Automated annotation of information about indoor environments is needed for natural-language processing tasks, such as spatially anchoring events, tracking objects in motion, scene descriptions, and interpretation of thematic places in relationship to confirmed locations. Descriptions of indoor scenes often require a fine granularity of spatial information about the meaning of natural-language spatial utterances to improve human-computer interactions and applications for the retrieval of spatial information. The development needs of these systems provide a rationale as to why—despite an extensive body of research in spatial cognition and spatial linguistics—it is still necessary to investigate basic understandings of how humans conceptualize and communicate about objects and structures in indoor space. This thesis investigates the alignment of conceptual spatial relations and naturallanguage (NL) semantics in the representation of indoor space. The foundation of this work is grounded in spatial information theory as well as spatial cognition and spatial linguistics. In order to better understand how to align computational models and NL expressions about indoor space, this dissertation used an existing dataset of indoor scene descriptions to investigate patterns in entity identification, spatial relations, and spatial preposition use within vista-scale indoor settings. Three human-subject experiments were designed and conducted within virtual indoor environments. These experiments investigate alignment of human-subject NL expressions for a sub-set of conceptual spatial relations (contact, disjoint, and partof) within a controlled virtual environment. Each scene was designed to focus participant attention on a single relation depicted in the scene and elicit a spatial preposition term(s) to describe the focal relationship. The major results of this study are the identification of object and structure categories, spatial relationships, and patterns of spatial preposition use in the indoor scene descriptions that were consistent across both open response, closed response and ranking type items. There appeared to be a strong preference for describing scene objects in relation to the structural objects that bound the room depicted in the indoor scenes. Furthermore, for each of the three relations (contact, disjoint, and partof), a small set of spatial prepositions emerged that were strongly preferred by participants at statistically significant levels based on the overall frequency of response, image sorting, and ranking judgments. The use of certain spatial prepositions to describe relations between room structures suggests there may be differences in how indoor vista-scale space is understood in relation to tabletop and geographic scales. Finally, an indoor scene description corpus was developed as a product of this work, which should provide researchers with new human-subject based datasets for training NL algorithms used to generate more accurate and intuitive NL descriptions of indoor scenes

A Comprehensive Study of Internal Representations of Floor to Floor Transitions Points in a Large Complex Indoor Environment

Wayfinding in complex indoor environments can be a stressful and disorienting activity. Many factors contribute to this difficulty, one reason being the number of floors paired with many different and often unpredictable ways to get from one floor to another. This dissertation focuses on providing a comprehensive analysis of how the human cognitive system represents the spatial information in floor to floor transition points. In particular, this project will focus on the internal representations formed by people familiar with a particular complex environment. In order to accomplish this, a user study was conducted at the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History that drew participants from the Visitor Services Department. Participants were asked to give wayfinding descriptions to and from several landmarks in the museums with the majority of the routes spanning multiple floors. Both verbal descriptions and sketch map descriptions were studied. It was found that floor to floor transition points were often represented as landmarks with two landmarks in particular being represented often as both functional as well as reorientation landmarks. This finding continues the discussion on global landmarks and their representation and salience in large complex indoor environments