An operational assessment of the Joint Hurricane Testbed's first decade

This paper evaluates the Joint Hurricane Testbed's (JHT) first ten years from the perspective of the program's primary customer, the National Hurricane Center (NHC). A total of 50 projects spanning four two-year proposal cycles completed testing and evaluation during the JHT's first decade. A fifth round of projects is in its concluding year, and the proposal process for a sixth round is underway. NHC Hurricane Specialists (forecasters) graded the impact on operations of the program as a whole between "significant" and "transformational". They gave the same assessment to the highest ranked individual projects. The top ranked projects will be identified and examples of successful projects will be shown.

To achieve its successes, the JHT program overcame several key obstacles. These will be listed as potential lessons learned for future research-to-operations testbeds. Key administrative issues associated with the program's establishment, proposal announcement process, funding uncertainties and realities, challenges of marrying research and operational cultures, and real-time forecast considerations will be included.