Tackling Some Smoldering Challenges of Communicating Hurricane Risks via the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences

This presentation will discuss the goals and preliminary efforts of the next phase of funded social and behavioral science research and integration to improve NOAA’s communication of hurricane information, with emphasis on the National Weather Service (NWS) and National Hurricane Center’s tropical cyclone (TC) product suite. Over the past decade, the research community and the NWS have made great strides on both the physical and social and behavioral aspects of hurricane forecasts and impacts. The NWS invested in social science studies of individual TC products, such as the Storm Surge Watch/Warning, Potential Storm Surge Flooding Map, and the Arrival of Tropical-Storm-Force Winds graphics, while the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP) and other efforts within the research community continued to advance numerical weather prediction and find novel ways to characterize and communicate forecast uncertainty. Because of these advancements, new methods for communicating uncertain forecasts (such as TC intensity forecasts) or new information delivery systems (such as a redesigned NWS hurricane website adapted to users’ needs), for example, are now possible.

The landscape of how people receive, use, and perceive TC information is also transforming. To maximize the value of improved forecasts, NOAA must understand how partners and publics consume, understand, use, and process TC information collectively. By bridging the current status of the meteorological science with social and behavioral science, and incorporating new, operationally viable communication tools, techniques, and messages, NOAA will be strategically poised to improve and potentially revolutionize its TC product suite.

The policy landscape is also transforming NOAA’s risk communication efforts. Section 104 of the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017 (the “Weather Act”) requires NOAA to “plan and maintain a project to improve hurricane forecasting, including…risk communication research to create more effective watch and warning products.” In addition to the new law, the refreshed 10-year vision and goals of the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP) put NOAA on a path to incorporate risk communication research into the design and communication of its hurricane weather information.

Helping to fulfill the goals of the Weather Act and HFIP, and making the next phase of social and behavioral science research and integration possible, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (Disaster Supplemental Appropriations) appropriated funds for NOAA to oversee four complementary research projects addressing (1) how publics consume and process tropical cyclone information (shifting risk perception), (2) how NOAA’s hurricane web presence can be modernized to optimize tropical cyclone information for public consumption, (3) how the NWS can prioritize efforts to modernize its tropical cyclone product suite and identify gaps for decision support services, and (4) how forecasters, partners, and customers use probabilities in tropical cyclone uncertainty communications (numeracy skills). In addition, two other projects are investigating the long-known issues of the misinterpretation and misuse of the NHC’s “cone of uncertainty” and investigating the economic value of improving hurricane forecasts. This presentation will discuss the goals and preliminary efforts of these studies, and how the research fits into NOAA’s efforts to improve hurricane risk communication.