The New National Weather Service concept of operations

NOAA's National Weather Service is defining a new concept of operations that will enable forecast offices to focus more effectively on high impact events while ensuring delivery of routine products and services. The new concept of operations is built around “clustered peers,” a group of field offices that can readily realign resources to collaborate with each other, as well as other offices, to deliver products and services.

NOAA's National Weather Service is planning to conduct a test of this new concept of operations during a prototype phase from 2007 through 2009. The new concept of operations will be evaluated to show if National Weather Service can

• Improve service by providing greater focus on high-impact events • Find more effective ways of operating • Maintain local expertise • Take on additional environmental information service responsibilities, and • Increase the quality of work life for employees.

This paper explores the “clustered peer” concept of operations and describes the schedule of activities to be executed over the next two and a half years. The overall approach is test the prototype within the constraints of today's technology while evaluating its long term potential.