A Potential Framework for Whole Office Training in National Weather Service Weather Forecast Offices

The National Weather Service (NWS) Operations Proving Ground (OPG) conducts forecaster evaluations of promising tools and techniques developed by field offices, research projects, and testbeds. To facilitate those evaluations, the OPG has devised simulation playback capabilities utilizing the NWS' Advanced Weather Information Processing System-II (AWIPS-II). OPG refined AWIPS-II playback capabilities during its evaluation of scanning strategies in preparation for the 2016 launch of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-R Series. This capability allows OPG to ingest and display historical datasets in “pseudo real time” using AWIPS-II, creating a realistic yet controlled environment in which forecasters can perform analysis, forecasting, and warning tasks as they would under normal Weather Forecast Office (WFO) operations. During OPG's GOES-R scanning strategy evaluation, many NWS forecaster participants wished to have the ability to “train as you fight” in the WFO. While they felt the WFO Weather Event Simulator (WES) was important to enhance forecaster skills with operational software, there is another level of training that is difficult to accomplish with the WES. Forecasters indicated a desire for training simulations to incorporate the “whole office” concept because many of the challenges during an event, especially during warning operations, involve the interactions between warning forecasters, partners outside the WFO, and the warning coordinator. The OPG's simulation playback capability can allow WFOs the ability for whole office training. This presentation will discuss how the OPG creates playback capability for whole office training using AWIPS-II, the potential adaptability of this capability to WFOs, and the possible applications of whole office training within a WFO.