Improving Forecast Product Design, Delivery and Accessibility: Moving Beyond Just Product Development with a Focus on Precipitation Products

You have an accurate forecast, what now? You can have the best data in the world, but if it is not accessible and understandable, it will not achieve forecast and communication objectives to inform target audiences about impending extreme weather events. By focusing solely on development of data products, and not considering how the design and format will affect usability and decision-making, can impede its value to end users. Further, understanding how data products are used, modified, and shared once they are created is critical to improving forecast delivery. The Weather Prediction Center (WPC) of the National Weather Service (NWS) advances development of new and improved hydrometeorological forecast products. User feedback has identified that this suite of products presents challenges to audience understanding; additionally, the products are housed on an aging website. The WPC has identified its website as needing design and organization improvements to optimize the accessibility of WPC data.

To support these revisioning efforts, the Nurture Nature Center is leading a multi-phase social science research study and design project that is providing user testing and iterative refinement of precipitation products in coordination with the WPC. The study includes scenario-based focus groups across the country in a variety of settings (e.g. urban, rural, coastal, mountains) to inform user-tested recommendations related to design improvements for the suite of probabilistic and deterministic rainfall products, including the Excessive Rainfall Outlook, Mesoscale Precipitation Discussion, the QPF, the probabilistic QPF, and the Extreme Precipitation Monitor. In addition to design recommendations, use case descriptions will be compiled to identify how these products are used and adapted for risk communication and decision-making. Additional focus groups will test design recommendations for a newly developed, experimental Urban Rain Rate Dashboard. A further component of the project is a usability study of the WPC website that will result in recommendations for redesign of the site and improved navigation and accessibility. Throughout this project, the research team is engaging with professional stakeholders, including water resource professionals, emergency managers, stormwater managers, transportation and health officials, as well as internal users including forecasters, to identify their needs and gather feedback on products and website design and utility.

WPC’s precipitation products are invaluable information and tools for communicating potential impacts to end users. The social science research efforts will improve the accessibility, design, and delivery of such important data sources, critical for helping practitioners and other professional stakeholders better communicate an accurate understanding of risk and impacts to those most vulnerable. This presentation will provide an overview of the project and findings to date, and discuss the importance of employing social science research to support forecast product development and dissemination. This project highlights the benefits of interdisciplinary approaches bringing technical and social science fields together in coordination to improve risk communication, to help answer “what now?” after products are developed.