The Roles of the Weather Enterprise, the Community, and the Individual in Managing Severe Weather Response Health

One of the goals stated by members of the weather enterprise is to educate the public about maintaining and managing their severe weather responses in a way that prevents harm and loss of life. By drawing on an analogy between the health care system and the weather enterprise, we can re-envision building weather readiness as a healthy public response system. That is, the more prepared the public is the more resilient they are to severe weather events. Using the CDC's model of public health and medical preparedness, this presentation discusses the conceptual models of the weather enterprise, the community, and the individual, and their roles in preventing poor severe weather response. Much as the health industry is shifting toward prevention, the weather enterprise might also take advantage of initiatives such as Weather Ready Nation to augment the model of response with a model for increased prevention. Using the NWS service assessment process as a framework, the elements of the assessment will be used to illustrate the respective roles and responsibilities of the weather enterprise, local communities, and individual members of different publics. Most importantly, we hope this approach will offer insight into how we might anticipate and diagnose vulnerabilities in our nation's severe weather response health.