FACETs R2O: Collaborative Progress toward Operations

Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats (FACETs) is a proposed next-generation hazardous weather watch/warning framework that is modern, flexible, and designed to communicate clear and simple hazardous weather information to serve the public. This initiative originated in the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) with a focus on severe convective weather and flash flooding. In 2015, NSSL worked with a variety of public and private sector partners to develop a Science and Strategic Implementation Plan (SSIP) to guide physical and social science research-to-operations efforts toward achieving a FACETs paradigm. Later that year, a US Weather Research Program (USWRP) grant was awarded to NSSL, along with collaborators at the National Weather Service (NWS) Storm Prediction Center, NWS Weather Prediction Center, Environmental Systems Research Lab, University of Oklahoma, and University of Akron, to begin work on eleven of the highest priority SSIP projects. This three-year project of projects, called “Probability of What? Understanding and Conveying Uncertainty through Probabilistic Hazard Services” (PoW), focused on a variety of FACETs-related physical and social science challenges in forecasting and warning for severe convection and flash flooding.

As PoW comes to an end this year, NSSL is working with its partners to evaluate and contextualize the significant progress made through this and other related work over the last three years – all toward achieving the goals of the SSIP. This presentation will provide a broad overview of the PoW R2O findings and accomplishments, and the associated progress toward a FACETs paradigm. Additionally, NSSL will be conducting a series of workshops and meetings with various partners through the rest of 2018 to develop plans for the next phase of R2O work. NSSL will also collaborate with the NWS on potential milestones and timelines for testing and evaluation as FACETs concepts approach operational readiness. This presentation will provide a summary of outcomes from these collaborations.