NCAR

1
NCARs Societal Impacts Program WIST-Related
Research Efforts

• Julie Demuth
• NCAR Societal Impacts Program
• 3rd National Surface Transportation Weather
  Symposium
• Vienna, VA
• July 18, 2007

2
Outline

• Socio-economic roles in WIST
• NCARs Societal Impacts Program (SIP)
• SIPs research activities relevant to the
  transportation community
• OUSSSA
• ISSA-T
• Other related efforts

3
Socio-economic roles in WIST goals

• Identify the priorities, challenges, and
  opportunities for research and development that
  will contribute to saving lives, reducing
  injuries, and improving efficiency in the
  Nations surface transportation infrastructure.
• Investigate opportunities to document and
  substantiate the socioeconomic impacts of
  improved surface transportation weather products
  and services.
• Identify the potential and emerging information
  dissemination technologies available to get the
  right message to surface transportation weather
  stakeholders.
• Establish partnerships with the stakeholder
  community to ensure that customers and
  stakeholders understand how to effectively use
  surface transportation weather products and
  services in their decision-making processes.
• Identify the needs for new products and services
  driven by current operations or concepts for
  future surface transportation systems. Are there
  existing capabilities or emerging research and
  development that can be leveraged and/or
  transitioned into operations to meet these needs?
  How can probabilistic forecasts be used to meet
  these needs?
• Articulate a clear observation strategy for
  surface transportation weather that defines the
  types of data that are needed and the optimal mix
  of observing platforms required to meet those
  needs.
• Define the needs for advanced computing capacity
  required for surface transportation weather
  modeling and for the assimilation of data from
  multiple data sources.

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Societal Impacts Program (SIP)

• Jeff Lazo, Director
• Objective
• Improve the societal gains from weather
  forecasting by infusing social science and
  economic research, methods, and capabilities into
  the planning, execution, and analysis of weather
  information, applications, and research
  directions.
• Achieved through combination of research,
  outreach and education, WASIS program, capacity
  building / community support

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Why study this?

• Socio-economic valuation and impacts analysis
• lives saved
• time saved
• environmental values
• Program justification
• Program evaluation
• Guidance for research investment
• Inform users of forecast benefits

Weather forecast value and related topics are
often mentioned but rarely studied!
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Overall U.S. Sector Sensitivity Assessment
(OUSSSA)

• Goal Evaluate the sensitivity of U.S. economic
  sectors to weather variability
• Economic impacts of weather
• Motivation Wide use of back-of-the-envelope
  economic sensitivity estimates (e.g., Dutton
  2002)
• Methodology
• Sensitivity variation in economic productivity
  caused by weather variability
• Technology and economic inputs (capital, labor,
  energy) held constant
• Estimate sensitivity using data for 11 sectors,
  48 states, 24 years 12,672 observations

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OUSSSA -- Sector sensitivity
(Billions 2000)
Sector Mean Max Min Range Range
Agriculture 127.6 134.4 119.0 15.4 12.09
Wholesale trade 601.5 607.8 594.5 13.3 2.20
Retail trade 761.5 771.2 753.9 17.3 2.27
FIRE 1,639.3 1,713.1 1,580.6 132.5 8.08
Communications 237.3 243.4 232.3 11.1 4.68
Utilities 212.9 220.8 206.0 14.9 6.98
Transportation 276.1 280.7 271.0 9.8 3.53
Manufacturing 1,524.8 1,583.2 1,458.2 125.1 8.20
Construction 374.5 384.0 366.4 17.7 4.71
Mining 102.0 108.9 94.2 14.7 14.38
Services 1,834.9 1,865.4 1,804.9 60.5 3.30
Total National 7,692.4 7,813.4 7,554.6 258.7 3.36
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Individual Sector Sensitivity Assessment
Transportation (ISSA-T)

• Goal Assess transportation sectors use and
  value of weather forecasts and weather
  information
• Motivation
• Develop baseline knowledge and valid and reliable
  socio-economic methods for use and value
• Improve provision of weather information and
  support public investment in weather observing
  and forecasting systems
• 5 subsectors air, rail, water, truck, pipeline

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ISSA-T

• Methodology expert elicitation from researchers,
  private sector employees, government officials
• Phase 1 (now through Fall 2007) Input through
  semi-structured interviews to refine project
  scope, assess methodological approach, hone
  survey instrument for next phase
• Phase 2 (tentative) Input through online
  structured survey from a broader population of
  experts

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ISSA-T

• Interview questions
• Experts demographics, general sector assessment
• Weather impacts
• How weather affects costs, demand
• Annual variability of weather effects
• Economic impacts
• Use and value of weather forecast information
• Look at weather information currently used,
  available but not currently used, not available
• Usefulness, upper and lower bounds of costs,
  upper and lower bounds of value of weather
  information

• We need your input!
• Feedback, contacts to interview or survey,
  references, etc.

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Other related efforts

• Communication of Forecast Uncertainty (CoFU)
• To assess publics understanding, use, and
  preferences about forecast uncertainty
  information
• Warning Decisions in Extreme Weather Events
• Explore decision processes of 4 user groups in
  obtaining, interpreting, and responding to
  extreme weather event warnings
• Case study of the December 20-21, 2006, blizzard
  along the Colorado Front Range
• Peoples information sources and driving
  decisions ? actual behaviors!
• Warning Project
• Peoples information sources and driving
  decisions related flash flood and tornado
  scenarios ? stated behaviors

12
WIST goals revisted

• Identify the priorities, challenges, and
  opportunities for research and development that
  will contribute to saving lives, reducing
  injuries, and improving efficiency in the
  Nations surface transportation infrastructure.
• Investigate opportunities to document and
  substantiate the socioeconomic impacts of
  improved surface transportation weather products
  and services.
• Identify the potential and emerging information
  dissemination technologies available to get the
  right message to surface transportation weather
  stakeholders.
• Establish partnerships with the stakeholder
  community to ensure that customers and
  stakeholders understand how to effectively use
  surface transportation weather products and
  services in their decision-making processes.
• Identify the needs for new products and services
  driven by current operations or concepts for
  future surface transportation systems. Are there
  existing capabilities or emerging research and
  development that can be leveraged and/or
  transitioned into operations to meet these needs?
  How can probabilistic forecasts be used to meet
  these needs?

13
Thank you!

• Contact
• Jeff Lazo, SIP Director (lazo_at_ucar.edu)
• Julie Demuth (jdemuth_at_ucar.edu)
• www.sip.ucar.edu