Visualization of uncertainty in complex projects

In a project entitled "The Future of Managing Megaprojects,"the research team prototyped two advanced data visualization concepts to enhance organization and situational awareness in highly complex, highly uncertain projects. In megaprojects, leadership must adopt methods to discover and track project uncertainties and adapt project planning and resources as necessary changes and actions emerge. Traditionally this has relied on leadership intuition. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) can continually observe both qualitative and quantitative data from diverse project sources to surface hidden information. While this cannot predict outcomes, it can aid the intuition of the project leadership with situational awareness of emerging issues and organization of project tactics for response. We prototyped two novel display concepts, a metaphoric display and a project uncertainty dashboard, to test the ability of generative AI to aid in management of large complex projects. Metaphors can serve as effective tools in visualizing abstract and interconnected concepts, fostering a shared vision, and facilitating discussions among team members and stakeholders. The project uncertainty dashboard used a novel uncertainty classification rubric to alert leadership to project issues arising from unknown or unexpected events. The alerts were created by both open and custom Large Language Models (LLMs) that were trained with eight aspects of uncertainty in the rubric. These prototypes offer new approaches for humans to visualize the complexity of megaprojects as a complex systems management tool.