Weather Risk Information and Impacts for School Systems Kit (WxRISK)

The vision of Weather Ready Nation is achieved through the synthesis of the large number of NOAA products and services into meaningful and actionable information for community stakeholders and individual populations. The challenge is an increasing desire from these stakeholders and populations for forecast confidence and quantification of uncertainty in weather forecast products. Many community stakeholders find themselves in high-stakes weather-related decision making situations where they are left to their self-interpretation of forecast information or model output. This non-specialist self-interpretation can be dangerous and may be influenced by source bias, hype, or other situational-dependent factors. This Phase I effort seeks to address improving the communication of probabilistic forecast information used in school system closure decision-making with establishing the feasibility of the Weather Risk Information and Impacts for School Systems Kit (WxRISK) software system. WxRISK will provide spatial weather hazard risk information customized to a school district and include features to use pre-existing school communication channels to relay critical weather forecast information to parents ahead of impactful weather events. This software system will address the Weather Enterpise’s goal of public-private partnerships to increase awareness of NOAA products and services and build a more Weather Ready and resilient nation.