Collaboration and Partnership

The NWS recognizes the critical importance of collaboration and partnership with all NOAA offices and numerous public, private, and academic partners to achieve our vision for 2020. The dissemination, communication, and validation of NWS forecasts and warnings to the public are dependent on the media, emergency management community, and America's weather and climate industry. NWS views this diverse and growing industry - the companies, media outlets, and others that create weather programming, provide consulting services, and deliver information to American society - as a key strategic partner that provides valuable services to many businesses while also being an important economic sector in its own right. With this plan the NWS hopes to contribute to the growth of this sector as well as benefit from new alliances and strengthened relationships.

NWS will work closely with local, state, and national emergency managers to better understand the information they need to assess risk and make decisions. NWS envisions interoperable technologies that will make collaboration with emergency managers easier and more seamless than today. Achieving our science and technology objectives will not be possible without the close collaboration and contributions of NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (NOAA Research), along with numerous other academic and research institutions that provide a greater understanding of the Earth's complex systems and help solve research challenges in the physical and social sciences. In addition to NOAA Research, the other mission offices that comprise NOAA will continue to play a vital role in our day-to-day operations and the success of our future. These offices are:

• - National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) - acquires and manages Nation's environmental satellites, manages NOAA data centers, provide. environmental data, and performs environmental assessments;
• - National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) - conserves, protects and manages living marine resources within the United States;
• - National Ocean Service (NOS) - protects coastal communities and monitor our coastal, Great Lakes, and deep-ocean waters;
• - Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO) - manages and operates NOAA's ships and aircraft while managing data acquisition technologies

In the future we envision NOAA offices working more closely together to deliver common services based on integrated environmental data and information. Looking beyond NOAA, we also rely on the expertise of other government agencies. The NWS vision of the future will require closer collaboration with local, state, and federal government agencies to provide more integrated, usable, and relevant information and services. NWS must strengthen relationships with many existing partners, while also developing new relationships that better enable integration of environmental information into emerging areas that have economic, environmental and health impacts. Examples of long-standing partnerships include FEMA, FAA, DOD, USGS, NASA and numerous state and local officials. NWS collaboration and partnership does not stop at U.S. borders. We will continue to foster global collaboration working through the United Nations process and international agreements. Global cooperation on observations, data exchange, modeling, research and development is key to our continued and future success.