Testing a Selected Prototype For Change: NWS Hazard Simplification Project

The National Weather Service (NWS) has reached an important point in its Hazard Simplification (Haz Simp) project. Based on 5 years of social science with our forecasters, public, and partners, we are now examining the technical and policy requirements to confirm feasibility of removing the term “Advisory” from the NWS Watch, Warning and Advisory System. This is because one of the most important findings from this research has been that there exists a high level of misunderstanding around the “Advisory” headline. Our public and even some partners frequently confuse “Watch” and “Advisory,” considering them almost as synonyms.

This change would retain our current “Watch” and “Warning” terms, but remove “Advisory” as a headline term. This change to the WWA system supports IDSS (Impact-based Decision Support Services) for our core partners by aligning with the Prepare (Watch) and Act (Warning) paradigm used by emergency managers. To clarify, this would not result in elimination of Advisory-level information; rather, it’s an opportunity to explore how we could communicate this information in a different, more intuitive way. As a part of this change, we will consider expanding the use of the headline “Emergency” beyond Tornado and Flash Flood for selected hazards, and also look into how we might improve our sub-Advisory messaging.