An Evolution of Integrated Warning Team Research: A Look at Former, Current, and Future Research Avenues

The evolution of the research and analysis of Integrated Warning Team (IWT) communication is outlined. The initial research of IWT messaging focused on an informal analysis of the 3 April 2012 North Texas tornado outbreak, where no fatalities occurred despite several strong tornadoes affecting densely populated areas. This study was followed up with a more formal examination of IWT communications through a thorough analysis of interactions between North Texas IWT members during the 15 May 2013 tornado outbreak. Communications from all members of the IWT were collected and organized so that a quantitative analysis of the IWT communications network could be performed for this event. The results of this research were published recently in the July 2016 issue of Weather, Climate, and Society. This research focused on the communication between IWT groups, and a higher resolution analysis of IWT communications was identified during the peer review process as a way to extend the understanding of the nature of IWT communications. A high resolution analysis of IWT communications was conducted during the 26 December 2015 Sunnyvale/Garland/Rowlett EF-4 tornado, and an overview of those techniques is also shown here. The goals of this study are to document the evolution of IWT communications research in order to solicit feedback for new avenues of IWT research, and to help expand the availability of current research techniques to other parts of the United States.