Empowering people and businesses with AccuWeather decision-making indices

Weather information significantly impacts our daily activities - everyday millions of people worldwide access weather information to decide whether to use sunscreen or moisturizer, plan BBQs, go hiking, etc. Weather conditions can create unfavorable environments for physical and social activities; however, the decision-making for specific activities depending on weather conditions is not straightforward. Some activities require evaluating multiple weather parameters before making decisions. AccuWeather has a history of helping people make the best weather-informed decisions through innovative communication of weather and its impacts. One way in which AccuWeather does this is through customized lifestyle indices. These indices are tailored to specific activities and industry sectors, providing direct business solutions and simplifying the understanding between weather and business operations. When generating these customized indices, AccuWeather meticulously investigates the impacts of weather on each specific business or activity, producing high-quality indices that aid decision-making. AccuWeather has developed over 50 indices and are categorized into environmental (AccuLumen Brightness, stargazing), health (dry skin, asthma), travel (flying, driving), physical (hiking, climbing), and social (outdoor BBQ, outdoor concert), and are available globally at hourly or daily scales. For example, the dry skin index represents the magnitude of drying stresses on the skin caused by outdoor humidity and temperature changes, with values ranging from 0 to 10, where 10 (0) indicates a high (low) likelihood of experiencing skin dryness. This presentation will delve into the research and science behind these AccuWeather indices and show examples for the wide range of applications of these indices.