DESI - The Newest Decision Support Tool for Fast and Meaningful Interrogation of Ensemble-based Numerical Weather Data

Weather has a pervasive influence on human decision-making, extending its impact beyond corporate strategies and down to the very fabric of our lives. Sometimes these decisions are as subtle as bringing a coat to work or as important as the next billion dollar disaster. An example of the latter could be a National Weather Service forecaster deliberating over the issuance of a Winter Storm Warning. A tool capable of efficiently and effectively analyzing pertinent hydrometeorological data is of critical significance in safeguarding lives, protecting property, and fostering economic growth at a national scale.

In response to this imperative we have created DESI – Dynamic Ensemble-based Scenarios for Impact-based decision support services. This cloud-based solution adeptly ingests vast amounts of ensemble-based data and quickly presents insightful statistics to the end user. These encompass a spectrum of metrics including basic percentiles, percentile ranges, timing uncertainty, and probabilities which can be viewed from a variety of perspectives – plan view, point view, and soundings. After the user has assessed conditions, DESI allows them to craft professional videos and images that can be shared with their partners or the public, empowering them to make better decisions.

Our presentation aims to address three major items around DESI. First, we will unveil the technology that underpins the speed of our platform. Secondly, we will look into the present operational use of our tool, shedding light on its real-world application. And finally, we will look at current/future work and how we plan to integrate a comprehensive social science strategy for sustained development. DESI stands as one of the latest research to operations prototypes in the National Weather Service and is currently being evaluated at over forty offices.