Building the Airplane while Flying: Research and Research-to-Operations for Severe Weather Warning in a Living Lab Environment

Living Labs are a user-centered approach for transitioning research into practice. They are characterized by 1) the involvement of practitioners, researchers, industry and the public as co-creators of new technologies, processes and policies; 2) real-world experimentation to understand societal complexity and context, and uncover tacit knowledge of users; and 3) an organizational structure, typically a public private partnership and 4) an innovation platform. The CASA Dallas Fort Worth Living Lab for Severe Weather Warning aims to improve the end-to-end severe weather warning. Our innovation platform is a network of high-resolution radars and other sensors that disseminates weather information through intermediaries, such as National Weather Service forecasters, emergency managers, stormwater managers and media, to the various segments of the public. This talk will address the benefits and challenges of conducting interdisciplinary research and research-to-operations with practitioners as part of a Living Lab. It will focus on an on-going collaboration among the City of Fort Worth stormwater, emergency management, and academic researchers to improve the urban flash flood warning and response. Through the living lab, the City of Fort Worth is evaluating how high-resolution quantitative precipitation estimation data from X-band radars can help the city better manage its field workers and warn the public about risk. In addition, the academic partners are conducting near real-time surveys of motorist decision-making during potential flood events. Managing funding streams, aligning academic and practitioner goals, adjusting to changes, understanding organizational culture differences, gaining trust and building the relationships, will be highlighted as this project is described.