NWS' Hazard Simplification Project: An Update on the Effort to Simplify and Clarify Hazard Messaging

Abstract:  To support its vision of building a Weather-Ready Nation, NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) has initiated a Hazards Simplification (“Haz Simp”) project to explore options for simplifying its weather and water hazards messaging.  As part of the project methodology, and in collaboration with social and behavioral scientists, NWS is assessing the strengths and weaknesses of its current Warning, Watch, and Advisory (WWA) system and is exploring options on how to improve.

A fundamental strategy of the project is to engage with the entire user community, including broadcasters, emergency managers, members of the America’s Weather, Water and Climate industry and researchers.  Along these lines, this presentation will update latest efforts to collect user comments, summarize results of an NWS-internal and externally-based case study survey, and describe outcomes from a large stakeholder Workshop that was held in October 2015.  The presentation will focus on how users can provide continued feedback on prototypes developed based on these interactions.

The NWS Haz Simp project directly aligns with the NOAA/NWS Weather-Ready Nation initiative and NOAA’s project entitled “Facilitating a Continuum of Environmental Threats” (FACETS).