Building an Effective Warning System: Bridging the Five Valleys of Death

The WMO/WWRP High Impact Weather project (HIWeather) aims to produce weather-related warnings systems that contribute to building resilience much more effectively than is currently the case. This requires a multi-disciplinary systems approach since the inhibitors that reduce warning value are spread throughout the production chain and are not independent. HIWeather characterises the warning chain as five valleys of death separating peaks of disciplinary expertise characterised by distinct language and culture. A successful warning chain must bridge all of these valleys of death effectively and efficiently. I will report research that was presented at the HIWeather workshop in Beijing in November 2018, entitled “Increasing the Value of Weather-Related Warnings” together with related research, with the aim of providing pointers to what a future more effective warning system might look like and how it might be evaluated.