Assessment of Perceived Risk by Residents in Response to the Updated National Hurricane Center “Cone of Uncertainty” Product

As the frequency and severity of hurricanes increase and the effects of tropical weather hazards pose larger threats, people living along the coastline of the United States need to understand their risks to better engage in preventive behaviors. Yet, a serious challenge these coastal communities face is accurately interpreting hurricane information and developing precise risk perceptions from a visual commonly referred to as the Cone of Uncertainty (COU). The COU’s current design focuses on the illustration of a single central tendency that may not be easily understood by non-experts. Further, the COU does not provide information related to hazards associated with the storm size outside of the illustration.

Acknowledging such misunderstanding and its associated impacts on the population, especially coastal communities, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) announced that beginning in mid-August 2024, an experimental version of the COU would be released. This project intends to specifically review whether the NHC’s new visual leads to a higher understanding of risk perception. To put it simply, this study seeks to answer the following question: is the new COU more effective at communicating risk than the current one?

The project features a mixed-method approach with (a) in-depth interviews at four coastal locations (Panama City, FL, Perry, FL, Tampa, FL, and Savannah, GA) with varying degrees of recent exposure to tropical systems and (b) experimental evaluations of people’s perception of the COU in southern states.

Leveraging sample advisories provided by the NHC, this talk will present initial findings from the experimental study that took place at the beginning of the 2024 hurricane season. To date, one thousand coastal residents have participated in the study. Other project research questions and updates on related ongoing activities and deliverables are also incorporated.