Improve Weather Decision Services for events that threaten Safety, Health, The Environment, Economic Productivity, or Homeland Security

Urbanization and a growing population are increasingly putting society in harm's way of weather, water and climate events. For a growing number of people living in coastal communities, hurricanes, typhoons, and tsunamis threaten livelihoods and cause major damage to property and infrastructure. People who live along rivers and other inland waterways face increasing disruption because of more frequent and devastating flooding. Winter storms paralyze cities and regions for days and cost billions in cleanup and lost productivity. Tornadoes can take lives and destroy entire communities within a matter of seconds, while wildfires can burn for weeks threatening homes and natural habitats. Indirect impacts of these events, such as infrastructure failures, illness, and emotional trauma, can be just as significant. This goal seeks to minimize or even prevent such human and economic impacts.

• Measures of Success: Improved community emergency preparedness leading to fewer fatalities from weather-related events; less economic losses from unnecessary evacuations and property damage

Objective: Provide demand-driven, impact-based weather services

Strategies for Achieving

• - Impact-Focused Services:
  • -Provide impact-based forecasts by tailoring forecasts to user-defined thresholds with objective uncertainty to communicate human, economic, and environmental impacts and risks
  • -Redefine warnings to focus on a broad range of high impact events targeting those at-risk
  • -Develop methods, working with partners, to evaluate the economic and societal impact and relevance of NWS information. Apply results to improve services.
• - Decision Support:
  • -Increase direct, interpretive support to public sector officials and emergency responders for incidents of national, regional, or local significance
  • -Improve and expand use of new technologies to communicate with partners, users and employees across NOAA. Examples of such technologies include advanced visualization tools, collaboration, mobile, video, and voice
• - Dissemination: Leverage, in collaboration with partners, emerging dissemination methods to warn those specifically impacted by weather-related events
• - Outreach & Education: Improve the preparedness and resiliency of those at-risk to the impacts of weather-related events through impact-based outreach and education. Continue to promote community preparedness programs, such as TsunamiReady™ and StormReady®
• - Partnerships: Continue to engage and collaborate on global, national, and regional issues; and strengthen and broaden effective partnerships with other agencies, public and private sector partners, including America's weather and climate industry

Objective: Utilize emerging science and technology to improve weather prediction

Strategies for Achieving

• - Observations: Advance and deploy next generation integrated observing systems to address the Nation's need for real-time weather and climate data, in partnership with NOAA, other agencies, and private sector
• - Earth System Modeling: Develop and implement, with research community and other partners, high-resolution Earth system models, including land, atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere components for multiple time and space scales
• - Forecast Uncertainty: Develop and implement steps toward quantifying and communicating forecast uncertainty achieved through physical and social science research, ensemble model and forecast system improvements, and tools that assist users in applying forecast uncertainty in their decision making
• - Forecaster Tools: Develop and implement, with research community and other partners, forecaster tools that support data mining, enhanced visualization, smart decision assistance, and forecaster coordination and collaboration.
• - Data Access & Interoperability: Extend access to weather, water, climate, and environmental data using national and international systems and standards, such as Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), WMO Information System (WIS), internet and other technologies
• - Social Science: Integrate social science research, methods, and capabilities into science service areas, forecaster tools, and decision support systems
• - Partnerships: Build and strengthen partnerships to find and influence emerging technologies and define requirements to accelerate transition of research into operations
• - Transition of Research: Develop, in partnership with the research community, common modeling and operating infrastructures as well as testbeds to facilitate scientific and technological development and to accelerate the transition of research into operations

Advance science and technology in key areas where weather, water and climate impact society:

• - Severe Weather: Develop neighborhood-scale forecasts and warnings achieved by advancing warn-on-forecast for convective weather, improving quantitative precipitation forecasts, and improving tornado forecast skill
• - Hurricanes and Cyclones: Develop finer-scale and more accurate track, intensity and inundation forecasts by advancing observations and high resolution modeling for multiple scales
• - Winter Weather: Deliver storm-based winter weather watches, warnings, and advisories by increasing skill and precision for all winter weather variables
• - Fire Weather: Advance and deploy better observing systems, fire-scale models, forecaster and decision support tools
• - Tsunami: Improve tsunami detection, forecasting, and information based on better understanding of tsunamis, upgraded observations, higher resolution models, and improved data assimilation