Threats-In-Motion Workshop

Aug 21, 2019

TIM workshop in Norman, OK, in August 2019

On 21-22 August 2019, a workshop was held at the National Weather Center in Norman, OK. This workshop was attended by approximately 40 people, including representatives from all CONUS regions and multiple national centers and headquarters offices of the National Weather Service (NWS); Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR); federal and local emergency management (EM); broadcast meteorologists and private sector partners.  The purpose of this workshop was to bring participants up to date on the latest findings from research-to-operations (R2O) efforts in support of the Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats (FACETs) transition framework for convective hazards, and to synthesize these results to prioritize transition activities that would improve NWS warning services while accelerating the move toward a FACETs-based hazard services paradigm for convective hazards.

FACETs is a R2O framework designed to support NOAA’s hazardous weather warning and forecasting paradigm evolving to a comprehensive portfolio of social science-based risk communication products and services with a foundation upon probabilistic hazard information (PHI).  Interdisciplinary experiments in NOAA’s Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT) over the last several years have demonstrated numerous potential benefits of a FACETs-based hazardous weather communication system for core partners such as emergency managers and broadcast meteorologists.  One of the key aspects of FACETs that results in clear benefits to key decision makers is the concept of a continuous flow of information which will enable decision makers to have the best, most up-to-date information to support decisions at any time step in the lead up to a hazardous weather event.  This workshop focused on discussion of the potential implementation of the Threats-in-Motion (TIM) concept for convective watches and warnings as an initial operational step in the FACETs paradigm that could significantly enhance the continuous flow of information relative to the current watch/warning paradigm.  

TIM represents an initial step in transitioning the NWS convective watch and warning paradigm within the FACETs framework, particularly by moving the current paradigm toward a continuous flow of information.  TIM would leverage physical science and technical development done in support of FACETs to enable forecasters to utilize the Hazard Services software within AWIPS to issue convective watches and warnings which frequently update and translate with the area of threat.  This move to a more continuous flow of information to watches and warnings would enable some of the benefits from FACETs outlined above to begin to be realized.  For warnings, these include:

  • Increased - and more equitable - warning lead time 
  • False alarm time is not increased
  • Improved information about timing of onset/departure of threat, including “all-clear” type notifications

Workshop participants overwhelmingly support NOAA moving the TIM concept toward and into operations with all deliberate speed.  The workshop also invested considerable time in identifying what is needed as far as additional research and development to strengthen the TIM concept, and then test and validate it as a viable operational paradigm.