Building and Enhancing Decision Support Services across the National Weather Service Western Region

In concert with the National Weather Service (NWS) vision of building a Weather-Ready Nation, the NWS Western Region (WR) has been engaged in several activities aimed at building a culture within the local office which emphasizes the provision of decision support services as well as providing enhanced services to local, state, and regional decision makers. The focus of these efforts is to ensure there is an emphasis on delivering an appropriate message in a timely fashion. This presentation will focus on our efforts to date in the following areas:

• Building a decision support culture within the WR field offices. Collaboration between the Regional Office and field offices has resulted in the development and implementation of a set of tools, techniques, and best practices which allow the field offices to more easily and effectively provide decision support services to their local partners and decision makers.

• Supporting WR field offices from WR Headquarters. WR Headquarters has enhanced its coordination activities with the WR Field Offices to ensure all field offices are “on the same page” when high impact events are in the forecast.

• Integrating the use of social media. All WR WFOs have established Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. Some field offices have been very proactive in using social media to support and enhance their messaging related to significant hydrometeorological events.

• Enhancing state and regional partnerships. NWS WR Headquarters previously had no working relationship with any of the FEMA Regions with which it overlaps. Over the past year, NWS WR Headquarters has worked to establish relationships with FEMA Regions VIII, IX, and X to provide enhanced weather, water, and climate forecast information and support to their operations. This support includes participation in table-top exercises at the local and regional level. In addition, WR Headquarters is now partnering with the California Emergency Management Agency (CalEMA) to provide state-wide weather and water forecast decision support in advance of high impact events.