Preparing for FACETs: Future Warning Decision-Making Training Impacts from the 2016 Hazard Services—Probabilistic Hazard Information Experiment at the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed

A proposed next-generation severe weather watch and warning framework, Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats (FACETs), will fundamentally change the way National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters issue life-saving severe weather warnings. An essential part of FACETs is a system of rapidly-updating probabilistic hazard grids, known as Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI). After a series of Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) experiments allowed forecasters and emergency managers to critique and developers to improve PHI, the PHI prototype tool is ready to be integrated into an experimental version of the new NWS warning issuance software, NWS Advanced Weather Information Processing System (AWIPS) Hazard Services. Last spring, this Hazard Services-PHI (HS-PHI) combination was the subject of an HWT experiment that let 7 NWS forecasters from across the country begin to develop best practices for using the probabilistic guidance to issue severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings. Since this will be a precursor to a monumental new era of warning operations, comprehensive training will need to be developed by the NWS/OCLO Warning Decision Training Division (WDTD). Results, in the form of best practices and recommendations, from the 2016 HWT HS-PHI experiment participants will be a foundation from which WDTD will build this training. Not only will WDTD need to train on logistics of the HS-PHI software, but nuances of new warning issuance procedures will need to be covered in a way the variety of NWS forecasters will comprehend. Input from HWT participants and human factors experts will help WDTD frame the training in the best context.