Spatially Combining Census Data with the Storm Prediction Center's Convective Outlooks to Enhance Decision Support Services

Spatially combining census data with the NWS Storm Prediction Center's categorical Convective Outlooks can enhance the decision support services provided by National Weather Service field offices to emergency managers and other key partners. The 2010 United States census data shapefiles contain the population and number of households for areas defined predominantly by political boundaries. At the NWS Shreveport Weather Forecast Office, the intersections of the Storm Prediction Center's areal Outlooks with those of the census data are identified and the population and number of households extracted from those intersections. The percentages of the total population and number of households for each state, and for the United States as a whole, that are included in the various Outlook categories are computed. These data are disseminated as shapefiles and Keyhole Markup files through the National Weather Service's Web pages. This presentation will include a description of how the data are processed, samples of the products, and some examples of how they are used by the NWS staff in their decision support services.