An Introduction to the "Ken's 10" NWS Initiative: Probabilistic Impact-based Decision Support Services

The National Weather Service (NWS) is transforming to meet the current and future needs of society. To meet the ever increasing demands for detailed Impact-based Decision Support Services (IDSS), the NWS must fully leverage probabilistic information. We are building our expertise and tools to increase our capacity to understand, interpret and communicate risk-based, probabilistic information to drive probabilistic IDSS. With this in mind, a dedicated team has been formed to develop a roadmap to plan out the holistic needs of the agency to provide effective probabilistic IDSS. The long term goal of this effort is to transform NWS IDSS into a fully probabilistic paradigm. At completion of the first phase of this effort, the Probabilistic IDSS project will achieve the following objective:

Establish and implement a plan for probabilistic IDSS, including probabilistic forecast operations, across the agency by identifying and accelerating implementable projects focused on short, medium and long term goals.

The team will identify and evaluate existing probabilistic forecasting, IDSS, and training initiatives across NWS operations for potential inclusion in a roadmap, with a goal of developing probabilistic IDSS messaging approaches that are scalable to address national, regional, and local partner needs. This roadmap will galvanize current and future projects into a cohesive strategy; applying social, behavioral and economic science, innovative technological development, and evidence-based testing and evaluation. The roadmap will represent a validated path forward for implementation to be executed within existing NWS governance and resources. This presentation will provide an update on the activities of the team, existing products and services already underway, and future projects designed to bring us closer to our goal of a fully probabilistic agency providing indispensable mission services (eye to eye) with decision makers.