NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Department of Commerce // National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration // 2
Welcome!!
NWS Partners Meeting
Boston - January 2020
Remember when…
Highlights of virtual Partner engagements since….
● Summer 2020 Webinar Series
● May 2021: NWS Academia Partners
Roundtable
● July 2022: IDSS SDD Webinar
● NWS Services Webinars: Winter,
Tropical, Radar, web, etc…
● WRN Ambassador Roundtables
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Department of Commerce // National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration // 4
Today’s Agenda
Peyton Robertson
Director
Office of Organizational Excellence
National Weather Service
Cindy Elsenheimer
Partner Engagement Lead
Office of Organizational Excellence
National Weather Service
● Welcome and Logistics
● Why are Weather-Ready Communities
Important?
● IDSS Discussion
● Service Equity Education
● Harnessing the Weather, Water, and
Climate Enterprise Roundtable Discussions
● Wrap-up
Douglas Hilderbrand
Preparedness and Resilience Program Lead
Analyze, Forecast and Support Office
National Weather Service
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Department of Commerce // National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration // 6
IDSS - It’s About People
Service and the provision of
IDSS is about people -
together leveraging science
to serve our partners and our
communities through
preparedness efforts
ensuring “whole community”
resilience through equitable
service delivery.
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Department of Commerce // National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration // 9
Equitable Services for a Weather-Ready Nation
“Building a Weather-Ready Nation, One Community at a Time”
Service
Equity
Gaps
“One-Size” Services 🠞
Unequal Outcomes
Equitable Services 🠞
Equality of Outcomes
Arabi Tornadoes: March 22 and December 14, 2022
Kentucky Floods: July 28 and August 1, 2022
Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon Fire: April-June 2022
2023 AMS NWS Partners Meeting
8 January 2023
Building a Framework for Service Equity:
An Ethical Warning and Forecast
Communication System
Heather Lazrus, Terrific Colleagues and Community Leaders
Weather Risks and Decision in Society,
Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Laboratory
National Center for Atmospheric Research
air
•
planet
•
people
MMM/Weather Risks and Decisions in Society
14
Risk communication as a system and
resource
• A system – designed to share information (e.g. forecasts and
protective actions) with the mainstream
• A resource – lack of access to resources gives rise to vulnerability
(e.g. those outside the mainstream)
• Risk communication is necessary but not sufficient to reduce
vulnerability
15
Vulnerability is…
•Perceived
• Connected to perceptions of risk, justice, etc.
•Dynamic
• May be different at different times
•Emergent
• Emerges from other processes
•Political
• Flows from differentials in power
16
Many vulnerability and risk communication
models/approaches, e.g.,
• Social Amplification of Risk (Kasperson et al. 1988)
• The Protective Action Decision Model (Lindell and Perry 2004)
• Dialogue-based weather forecasts (Sivle and Aamodt 2019)
• Relational Model of Risk Communication (Lejano et al. 2018):
• As opposed to transactional
• Face-to-face
• Personalized and contextualized, thus increasing relevance
• Vividness and plausibility through narrative-style communication
• Tacit knowledge contribute to trust and empathy
• A Guide to Communicating with Socially Vulnerable Populations
Across the Disaster Lifecycle (Campbell et al. 2020).
• Adapt messages and message transmission pathways
• Collaborative Risk Communication (West et al. 2021)
17
Meteorological justice
“[I]f one accepts the foundational premise that hurricane forecast products and
communications should be designed to reach the widest possible audience, it is
necessary to engage with existing inequities in order to fulfill that goal” Millette et
al. 2020
Concepts of justice for service equity:
• Environmental justice
• As a dimension of environmental justice, meteorological justice is the idea that some
people are more systematically harmed by extreme weather than others
• Epistemic justice
• The equitable access to and understanding of information
Meteorological justice can be developed by understanding latent capacities
in risk communication as a dynamic, malleable, and relational system
accessed by people with agency in their information behaviors
18
Building a Framework for Service Equity through
Meteorological Justice
What: Equity across services
Why: Meteorological justice may help reduce vulnerability
How: - build services for diversity and inclusion
- reach out to/work with communities whose voices haven’t been heard
- build trust and expand empathy
- support social networks including peer-to-peer communication
- acknowledge tacit and local knowledge
- acknowledge history and context
- democratize access to and creation of information
19
Thank you
Heather Lazrus: hlazrus@ucar.edu
Weather Risks and Decisions in Society
(WRADS) website: www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrads
20
REFERENCES
• Campbell et a., 2020 Website:https://hazards.colorado.edu/uploads/freeform/
Risk%20Communication%20Guide_FINAL_508_Ed%20Feb%202021.pdf
• Kasperson 1988 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1988.tb01168.x
• Lejano et al. 2018 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-17-0050.1
• Lindell and Perry 2004 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452229188
• Millette et al. 2019 DOI: 10.1175/WCAS-D-19-0011.1
• Sivle and Aamodt 2019 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/wea.3439
• West et al. 2021 DOI:10.5055/jem.0547
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Department of Commerce // National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration // 21
NATIONAL
WEATHER
SERVICE
Beyond the Monolith: A Path Forward
in Serving Multilingual Communities
Joseph E. Trujillo Falcón
CIWRO/NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory
NWS Storm Prediction Center
January 8, 2023
Building a Weather-Ready Nation // 23
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Se Habla Español: # of Spanish Speakers Across the World as of 2019
1. México 125, 929,433
2. Colombia 49,834,914
3. Spain 46,698,569
4. USA 41,017,620
5. Argentina 44,938,712
U.S. IN 2060:
119,000,000
HISPANOHABLANTES
(THAT’S NEARLY 1 IN EVERY 3
AMERICANS)
(Instituto Cervantes 2019)
El Mundo Habla Español
Building a Weather-Ready Nation // 25
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Insights in Current Practices
Tornado Watch & Warning Terminology
Agency/
Organization
Tornado
Watch
Tornado
Warning
NWS Vigilancia de
Tornados
Aviso de
Tornado
FEMA Amenaza de
Tornado
Advertencia
de Tornado
WMO Aviso de
Tornado
Alerta de
Tornado
“Where 66% of English speakers correctly identified a
tornado watch with the given descriptions, only 38%
of Spanish speakers were able to do so” –
Trujillo-Falcón et al. (2022)
Building a Weather-Ready Nation // 26
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
When Challenges Become Opportunities
❏ Translation efforts have been
grassroot and volunteer-based
across NOAA/NWS
❏ Educational campaigns and
outreach events are critical in
reaching the most underserved
❏ Without collaboration and
integration from partners across
the WWCE, efforts will continue
to be inconsistent
A Weather-Ready Nation Para
Todos
Building a Weather-Ready Nation // 27
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
"10 minutes before the tornado, we received the last warning notification in Spanish
since the previous ones were all in English. [If I did not receive the notification in
Spanish], I would have stayed upstairs. I was not looking at [an information source]
that told me it was going to get ugly [so I was not taking protective action].”
– Rosa, Guatemalan Immigrant in Mayfield
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Department of Commerce // National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration // 31
Challenge Statement: “I wish we could…”
Take 15 minutes and, as a table, come up with your challenge
statement.
Don’t focus on individual roles, but what you wish we could
accomplish TOGETHER. Dream big!
Your table facilitator may help find answers
to any specific questions you may have
about policy, ongoing efforts, etc.
At the end of time, submit your statement
through PollEv.
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Department of Commerce // National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration // 32
● “I wish the NOAA weather radio network was more robust in terms of
funding and infrastructure, and provided receivers at no cost (refreshed
periodically.”
● “I wish we could identify and address challenges aligned with the
national level "community life lines" in the face of a hazardous weather,
water and/or climate.”
● “I wish we could enable and empower each employer, each housing
communities, HOA, landlord with the most time and space appropriate
action and communication to convey to their workers , tenants,
residents etc. Not just evacuate or shelter.”
● “I wish we could be more nimble in our methods of communication.”
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Department of Commerce // National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration // 33
● “I wish we could better understand human behavior.”
● “I wish we could be more agile with social science by better leveraging
weather enterprise.”
● “I wish we had a national program that is well funded, regulated,
consistent, and trusted to communicate and provide access to NWS
information and data to communities.”
● “I wish we could build a trusted and consistent feed of weather info that
resonates with all global citizens.”
● “I wish we could all work together to build trust, create relationships,
communicate with everyone, to make sure everyone is safe, ready and
prepared.”
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Department of Commerce // National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration // 34
● “I wish we could achieve unification of terminology and risk
dissemination methods.”
● “I wish we could have a centralized plan and vision developed in
collaboration with WRN Ambassadors, run through the WRN program.”
● “I wish we could easily collaborate and build trust across the enterprise
and partners to empower every American to have the opportunity to be
safe through persona based outreach for climate and weather events.”
● “I wish we could break down the existing barriers to effective
public/private/academic partnerships.”
● “I wish we could measure response to messaging around weather
events real time.”
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Department of Commerce // National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration // 35
● “I wish we could allocate funding and focus that best serves the most
impacted communities to create equity.”
● “I wish we could have a consistent system to disseminate warnings
and alerts.”
● “Inter agency collaboration”
● “I wish we could allocate funding and focus that best serves the most
impacted communities to create equity.”
● “I wish we could provide/receive consistent products, services,
support, and outreach initiatives across all regions and offices.”
● “I wish we had a shared official list of local trusted champions whose
message is heard by the public.”
