NOAA's Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP): Redefining our Mission and Quantifying Value

In concert with a number of internal and external partners, NOAA’s Hurricane Forecast and Improvement Program (HFIP) is producing a new strategic plan for 2025 to 2035, with revised goals and quantifiable objectives on 5-year and 10-year timeframes. Here we will discuss how redefining HFIP goals to meet a new set of challenges can strengthen the social and economic value and resilience of the program through both R2O for modeling and public decision making processes. Progress in terms of meeting goals for improved prediction of track, intensity, and rapid intensification since the last strategic plan of 2019 will be assessed. We will also discuss what has been done thus far since the reauthorization of HFIP via the Weather Act of 2017 in terms of Social, Behavioral and Economic Science (SBES), probabilistic Impact-Based Decision Support Services (p-IDSS), and all-hazards prediction, and identify possible solutions that can be implemented to tackle unaddressed challenges over the next 5-10 years. Lastly, we will leverage recent studies to show the economic value and value to human life that has been generated via improvements to tropical cyclone forecasting, supported by HFIP, and implemented during the HFIP era since its establishment in 2007.