Uncertainty and risk: An analysis of the March 13-14, 2017 snowstorm impacting the Mid Atlantic and Northeast United States

As America’s environmental intelligence agency, NOAA provides timely, reliable, and actionable information to communities and businesses around the country every day. Forecasting extreme weather events impacting major population centers can be a significant challenge when there is high uncertainty in the forecast. NOAA’s National Weather Service has the responsibility in the issuance of forecasts and warnings to the public and emergency responders. This case study seeks to examine the March 13-14, 2017 snowstorm impacting the Mid Atlantic and Northeast United States,and how NOAA/NWS could leverage and deploy best practices from Risk Communication and Enterprise Risk Management in its forecast operations to help decision makers achieve NOAA’s Mission. Risk communication is an “interactive process of exchange of information and opinion among individuals,groups, and institutions. It involves multiple messages about the nature of risk and other messages, not strictly about risk, that express concerns, opinions, or reaction to risk messages or to legal or institutional arrangements for risk management.”Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) is “An effective agency-wide approach to addressing the full spectrum of the organization’s significant risks by considering the combined array of risks as an interrelated portfolio....ERM provides an enterprise-wide, strategically-aligned portfolio view of organizational challenges that provides improved insight about how to more effectively prioritize and manage risks to mission delivery. This case study will examine how Risk Communication and Enterprise Risk Management knowledge can be applied to support NOAA’s efforts towards creating a Weather-Ready Nation.