FACETs: The 2018 Hazard Services–Probabilistic Hazard Information (HS-PHI) Experiments at the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed

Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats (FACETs) is a proposed next-generation severe weather watch and warning framework that is modern, flexible, and designed to communicate clear and simple hazardous weather information to serve the public. One of the underlying aspects of FACETs is rapidly-updating probabilistic hazard grids, known as Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI). PHI can be used to provide custom user-specific products that can be tailored to adapt to a variety of needs – for example, providing longer lead times, at lower confidence, for more vulnerable populations with a lower tolerance for risk.

Working with NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory and Human Factors experts from the University of Akron, the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory’s Global Systems Division continues to develop an AWIPS-bound Hazard Services plugin that allows National Weather Service forecasters to produce prototype PHI output. This presentation provides an update on our third year of development, including improvements and new features, as well as testing in NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed. We will also report on the collaborative efforts that are underway to share experimental PHI and derived legacy NWS products between National Centers for Environmental Prediction offices (such as the Storm Prediction Center) and local NWS forecast offices.