The Central Region Impact-Based Warnings Demonstration - Findings from the 2012 Season

The National Weather Service (NWS) conducted service assessments to evaluate warning services and societal response following both the 27 April 2011 outbreak across the southeastern United States and the EF5 tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri on 22 May 2011. In an effort to address some of the findings from both assessments, the NWS Central Region identified a group of five offices to implement a suite of experimental impact-based warning (IBW) convective products to test how to better communicate threats and impacts to partners.

The goal of the IBW Demonstration is to measure how changes made to the warning products relate to the collective ability of the NWS, emergency management community and the media to assess, communicate, and manage severe convective weather risks. An evaluation of the effectiveness of 1) forecaster assessment of the potential impacts, 2) the packaging of the situational understanding about a storm event and its “urgency,” 3) the transfer of this knowledge to NWS partners (primarily emergency management and the media), and 4) whether and how that knowledge affects critical decisions such that the partners and the public alter their actions was conducted.

This presentation will summarize findings from information collected during the initial IBW Demonstration period (April through November 2012). These findings are based on interviews and surveys conducted with both NWS warning forecasters and partners and warning verification results, which will be used to further the IBW Demonstration in 2013.