Tuesday, 22 January 2008: 2:15 PM
SevereClear – a situational awareness necessity
206 (Ernest N. Morial Convention Center)
SevereClear began development in November 2006 by a multi-regional NWS team as a need to fill an operational gap in situational awareness. During high end significant weather events, the paper trail necessary in keeping track of multiple warnings and related products in progress was difficult to manage, and often was solely left as a responsibility of one person to track. After identifying the need to streamline this data and disseminate it to the operational staff, the team developed GIS based software with a graphical display of radar mosaics, warning polygons, local storm reports, and product tables. The uniqueness of the program comes from having a selectable table of active, expired, and cancelled watch/warning/advisory products. These products are clearly displayed side-by-side with a fully interactive and searchable spatially defined area with geographical weather related overlays. During real time testing, benefits to the operational staff from using SevereClear were significantly lower gaps in data flow and increased situational awareness in times of significant weather events.
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