Improving NWS Communication: Hazard Simplification Demonstration

The provision of clear, concise and understandable weather forecasts and warnings to the public and National Weather Service (NWS) partners comprises one of the key goals of NWS' Weather-Ready Nation initiative. However, results of recent service assessments and surveys indicate that some people do not fully understand NWS' official Watch, Warning and Advisory (WWA) hazards terminology and/or how we expect them to respond to messages containing these terms. In addition, there exists a suite of over 100 individual hazard products that rely on these three WWA terms to denote forecaster expectation of hazard timing, uncertainty and severity. Some of the feedback received from the assessments and surveys also indicates the public does not always correctly distinguish among these products.

Based on this feedback, NWS conducted a “Hazard Simplification Demonstration” this past winter. The specific purpose of this demonstration was to propose alternative language to lead its winter weather hazard messages, collect public and partner comments on the proposed alternative, and consider possible next steps. The larger goal is to initiate a national conversation on options for NWS hazard message simplification and clarification to maximize public understanding and inspire appropriate response.

A key attribute of this demonstration was that the alternative language was generated in real-time and displayed side by side with the current official WWA products on a webpage for easy comparison. Feedback on the proposed alternative language was collected via a web-accessible survey and email. Several thousand surveys and hundreds of emails were collected during the demonstration period from December 11, 2012 through March 31, 2013. As an additional benefit of the feedback process, many people suggested other alternatives and/or enhancements for simplification and clarification.

The demonstration team has captured these suggestions and will consider them along with all other feedback. This presentation will summarize the feedback received and suggest next steps for advancing the goals of this initiative.