Using the Case Walk Through Method to Elucidate the Interplay of Forecaster and Emergency Manager Decision-Making under an Experimental Warning Paradigm

NOAA’s Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats (FACETs) project applies to all types of weather hazards. One project, called Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI), is examining a more continuous and precise flow of information related to lightning, wind/hail, and tornadoes. During the 2017 PHI experiment, the case walkthrough procedure was used on the last full day to examine forecasters’ production of severe and tornado PHI information and an emergency manager's decisions based upon that information. Researchers observed and took notes while two forecasters and one emergency manager worked one hour of the 24 May 2016 Dodge City, Kansas, tornado event. During each of three project weeks, forecasters issued and updated tornado and severe PHI objects for the county warning area of the National Weather Service Dodge City Forecast Office while the emergency manager played the role of emergency manager for Dodge City. Immediately after the case, each participant viewed video of their desktops and described their actions and thoughts to a researcher. Timelines were then reviewed for accuracy and information was added about each key judgment made during the case. After the PHI project completed, timelines for each participant in a given week were supplemented with audio recordings and placed side-by-side. This talk will discuss 1) how forecasters generated and communicated information, 2) how it was received and acted upon by emergency managers, and 3) important implications of using this procedure.