May 22 - July 30
Exploring the effectiveness of Integrated Warning Team Activities
Caleb Johnson and Lans Rothfusz
What is already known:
- An Integrated Warning Team (IWT) is an ad hoc team of people involved in the preparedness and response to high-impact weather events.
- The most common members of this team are members of the National Weather Service, broadcast media and emergency managers.
- Little communication exists between NWS offices about the best practices for IWT activities.
What this study adds:
- Semi-structured interviews were conducted with IWT workshop participants to evaluate the effectiveness of the workshops.
- The interview was designed to identify characteristics of effective/ineffective IWT workshops and also to help develop a set of ideas on how to improve IWT activities.
- This study identified aspects of IWTs needing improvement and a weakness between core groups of the IWT.
Abstract:
An Integrated Warning Team (IWT) is an ad hoc team of people involved in the preparedness and response to high-impact weather events. The most common members of this team are the NWS, broadcast media and emergency managers. This study focuses on the effectiveness of IWT activities. NWS offices are leading many IWT activities with little communication between offices about what is working and what isn’t. The goal of this study is to see if IWT workshops enable more effective IWTs before, during, and after real events. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with IWT workshop participants to evaluate the effectiveness of the workshops. IWT participants from the NWS, broadcast meteorology, emergency management, and social science were interviewed. The interview was designed to identify characteristics of effective/ineffective IWT workshops and also help to develop a set of ideas on how to improve IWT activities. This study succeeded in identifying ideas for improvements and also identified a weakness between some of the core groups of an IWT. Future work will be discussed to further improve operational IWTs and IWT workshops.