Real-time estimation of population exposure to weather hazards

Severe weather hazards are forecast by the US National Weather Service on a daily basis, but until recently it has been difficult to quantify the human exposure to every hazard. At the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed, severe weather forecast information is being combined in real-time with a high-resolution population grid to estimate human exposure to a variety of hazards. Examples include population exposure to a landfalling tropical cyclone, a severe convective outbreak, and a swath of destructive hail. Implications for situation awareness and NWS impact-based decision support services are discussed, along with potential future expansion of this effort to include other hazards and other GIS data sets.