Temporal and Spatial Aspects of Emergency Manager Use of Prototype Probabilistic Hazard Information

Each year emergency managers and their local constituencies must make difficult decisions about severe convective weather threatening their area. The timing and spatial aspects of these challenges were studied during the 2016 Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) project, which falls within the convective timescale of Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats (FACETs) goals. Each week a city, county, and state level emergency manager simulated their jobs using PHI information issued by National Weather Service forecasters in another room.  Additionally, a broadcast meteorologist operated a mock TV station that provided live broadcasts to the EM and forecaster rooms, creating an integrated warning team, all cooperatively working the same displaced realtime and live weather events. This paper will discuss the decision making and actions of the eleven emergency manager participants, particularly in relation to the spatial and temporal aspects of the information available to them.