Designing a Next Generation Warning System

The National Weather Service is working on the next generation of warning system. In December 2008, the National Weather Service and the University of Oklahoma hosted a meeting of partners in the warning partnership. It included members of academia (physical and social sciences), private enterprise and broadcast media, Federal Government (NOAA, FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security) as well as state government (emergency managers).

The goals were to enable the partners to participate in the development of the requirements for the new warning systems, share details on new technologies and capabilities, and maximize the usability and flexibility of future NWS programs.

The first day was spent reviewing the state of the system, from a National Weather Service perspective, the perspective of the various partners and social scientists, and the impact of science and technology. We have become a mobile society, with very high bandwidth wireless and new generation mobile devices, and that technology is an important driver of the next generation of the warning process.

By Day Three, items of consensus had been arrived at, including: the need to involve the social sciences; educate the public on hazard impacts, products and services; coordinate with a wide spectrum of users before implementing policy changes, expand polygon based warnings to additional hazards; improve text based products; continue to exploit chat based systems for communication with emergency managers; provide raw graphical hazard data for ingestion into software systems; and finally to focus warning information to “what”, “where”, “when” and “intensity” in clearly defined format.

Items for debate were arrived at, including: alternatives to the terms “watch” and “warning”; the use of probabilistic hazard information, impact based criteria and whether “calls to action” are necessary.

The result will be a new suite of applications that can support the watch, warning and advisory mission of the Weather Service with accuracy, accessibility and timeliness.

Follow my weather history tweets on Twitter.com. I am @wxhistorian.

Category: Pre-November 2010 Posts