Pounding a Dendritic Peg into a Square Hole—National Weather Service Impacts Based Decision Support Services' Role in Federal Agency–Led Incident Response

The types of impacts-based decision support services (IDSS) increasingly provided by the National Weather Service (NWS) have not been explicitly included in the fifteen Emergency Support Functions (ESF) or the new Community Lifelines constructs of FEMA’s National Response Framework. In part based on nearly a century of successful interactions with the wildland fire community, NWS has ambitiously taken on an evolving strategic vision that includes becoming a more active participant within the Federal “family.” This proactive approach has already proved beneficial by leaning forward and demonstrating that weather information is important in support of the decisions made by every ESF, and within every Community Lifeline as a response situation is stabilized. NWS personnel are demonstrating the critical need that remains for the interpretive impacts-based services that the NWS workforce can provide. NWS continues to promote improved internal and external understanding that decisions impacting response efforts and responder safety will be weather impacted in some way. This is true even if the incident was not itself caused by a weather event. This presentation will include an explanation of the National Response Framework components and how the NWS Western Region liaison efforts have helped demonstrate the need for a Technical Specialist focused on potential weather and water impacts.