The National Weather Service (NWS) is rapidly expanding its role in providing “Impact-based Decision Support Services” to emergency management and other decision makers. An Operations Proving Ground (OPG)has been spun up at the NWS Training Center in Kansas City, MO to aid in the development of new communication tools, services, and training. The OPG has already partnered with the GOES-R Proving ground to develop new satellite data and algorithm training for NWS forecasters.

The Operations Proving Ground also will be used to receive feedback from the emergency management community prior to national deployments allowing NWS critical partners to help fine tune these new tools and services. A final and longer term goal is to develop weather simulations allowing NWS forecasters and decision makers an opportunity to train together both in residence and virtually.