The NWS Central Region Roadmap to Building a Common Operating Picture to Deliver Decision Support Services

The National Weather Service (NWS) has embarked on a journey to evolve its science and services to better meet the needs of a “Weather-Ready Nation.” Central Region of the National Weather Service (NWS-CR) has helped lead this effort creating the NWS CR Weather-Ready Nation Roadmap to effectively synchronize workforce, forecast, and services evolution efforts and align them with the NWS “Evolve” initiative.

NWS CR developed new concepts, tools and services to build a common operating picture that supports an evolving workforce in serving the public and core partners by strengthening the forecast process and iteratively improving upon impact-based decision support services (IDSS) into daily operations at each Weather Forecast Office (WFO), River Forecast Center (RFC), and the Central Region Operations Center (CR-ROC).

Regional tools and services implemented to build a common operating picture include “HazardBuilder” and the Enhanced Hazardous Weather Outlook which yield and display weather hazard risks, the “Trigger Chart” which supports operations by yielding baseline services levels that guide the operational tempo and issuance of services such as the “Situation Report,” a standard operating practice for delivering requested IDSS, and operational playbooks that provide operational guidance based on the standard service levels.

This integrated or end-to-end approach utilizing common tools and services emphasizes a collective “Whole Office” and “Whole Agency” effort in providing effective and consistent IDSS. Ultimately, this common operating picture results in improved services by focusing on a forecast process based on sound science, the execution of operations rooted in incident command principles, and on the delivery of interpretive services through active partner engagement.

An overview of the NWS-CR common operating picture including related tools and services will be presented.