Wednesday, 10 January 2018: 8:45 AM
Ballroom F (ACC) (Austin, Texas)
With the National Weather Service (NWS) striving to improve the nation’s readiness, responsiveness, and overall resilience through the Weather-Ready Nation program, it is an important first step to assess the general public’s understanding and willingness to act given our current weather hazard messages. To address these concerns, the NWS established the Hazard Simplification Project (HazSimp). This extensive research endeavor aims to examine the known issues with the current watch/warning/advisory (WWA) system and to test alternative weather warning systems developed in collaboration with social scientists. After conducting several phases of focus groups, the next steps of the project aim to increase the generalizability of their results via surveying a large sample of the general public. While the HazSimp Project originally planned to only examine convective-based hazards (i.e., tornadoes, thunderstorms, tropical, winter weather, and flooding), additional funding allowed for the expansion into non-precipitation products (i.e. extreme heat and nonconvective winds). Through building on the foundation of the HazSimp project, this presentation will provide a preliminary overview of the survey data for non-precipitation products and will outline: 1) the general public’s understanding of the current heat- and wind-related WWA terminology, 2) their response to the proposed warning paradigms, and 3) the risk and behavioral variables assessed within each warning system.
- Indicates paper has been withdrawn from meeting
- Indicates an Award Winner