Edit Retention for the "ForecastBuilder" Process

The ForecastBuilder software package, under development by the NWS, provides an approach within the NWS Evolve initiative for NWS operational meteorologists to construct grids. The Edit Retention component (FBER) of ForecastBuilder addresses a concern of forecasters that important details related to ongoing IDSS and weather/water impacts can be over-written by subsequent population with a new forecast solution. FBER allows a subset of grids in the database (as small as individual grids) to be “marked” for retention as new model solutions flow into the forecast database. As such, the meteorologists does not need to start over adding in a critical weather element with every new model output that is not depicting a local high impact event. Verification indicates that forecasters can improve the gridded guidance in the subset of areas where they diverge from guidance while not wasting time editing the vast majority of grids with non-impactful weather conditions. FBER allows important details such as local wind storms, areas of blowing snow, or other local hazards to be preserved easily, so that forecasters are able to spend time on hazard communication and messaging to deep core partners. In addition, the FBER system allows for tracking of what grids are marked for retention and when, as well as measuring the quality of grid retention, and whether an improvement was made to available guidance. With this constant verification and feedback, forecasters have the ability to learn when and where retention is worthwhile and advisable, and where down-scaled numerical guidance was superior.