National Weather Service

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All Hazards Emergency Support

• National Weather Service
• Springfield, Missouri
• Andy Foster Drew Albert
• WFO Springfield MO

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WFO All Hazards Support

• Provide mission specific weather information to
  support strategic and tactical decisions where
  and when it is needed.

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WFO All Hazards Support
All hazards support especially important in high
impact events. What is a high impact event?

• "A human-made or natural circumstance, often
  hazardous, and dependent upon or sensitive to
  weather and water. Significant events usually
  affect large numbers of people, generate media
  interest, and their nature is such that the NWS
  has, or can quickly develop, environmental
  expertise to provide service to mitigate the
  hazard."

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WFO All Hazards SupportDid Someone say Hazards?
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WFO All Hazards SupportLocal Incidents

• Incident command teams for regional emergencies
  have been established for ice storms (Jan and Dec
  2007), Missouri River Flooding (May 2007), large
  prescribed fires, tornado recovery, etc.
• WFO staff have been dispatched to some of these
  incidents/incident command posts

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WFO All Hazards SupportChallenges

• Staffing Resource Allocation
• Communications Internet, etc.
• Funding Travel, mileage, salary, etc.
• Training ICS 100/200/700, S-290/390.
• Equipment communications, monitoring software,
  protective clothing,
• Local Policy When and where to deploy?
• Partnerships need to build relationships
• Weather information timeliness and availability

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WFO All Hazards SupportThe Plan

• WFO Springfield presently spinning up incident
  command support.
• Goal is to support the Missouri State Emergency
  Management Agency (SEMA)
• Primary support through WCM and staff members
  who have received preliminary training (ICS
  100/200/700, S-290, etc).
• Get Equipped - Laptop with wireless capability,
  belt weather kit and or Kestrel unit. Possible
  use of USB Flash Drive? Graphics/presentation
  software, GIS, etc.

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WFO All Hazards SupportSolutions

• Implement properly equipped NWS into the ICS
  command structure.
• Properly equip for monitoring weather data and
  forecasts
• Develop effective means of communication-
  conference calls, internet, etc.
• Mission focused.

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WFO All Hazards SupportOnsite

• Onsite meteorologist acts as liaison between WFO
  and agency. The meteorologist represents the WFO
  and presents a tailored WFO forecast for specific
  mission needs.
• Utilize internet graphics from the WFO (Radar,
  news stories, etc.)
• Utilize weather display software
• Utilize GIS viewers
• Document EVERYTHING.
• Be prepared to brief at anytime.
• Be flexible.

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WFO All Hazards SupportOnsite - Communications

• Text message software. Pidgin Software
  http//www.pidgin.im/
• Cross Platform. Can monitor multiple chat
  platforms. SGF utilizes both America Online (AOL)
  Instant Messenger and a Jabber (open source
  instant message protocol) to chat within the
  IEMChat Project conference boards.
  https//iemchat.com/
• Chat with WFOs, monitor watch /warning/
  advisories.
• HAM, TRS

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WFO All Hazards SupportOnsite - Software

• BUFKIT - BUFKIT is a forecast profile
  visualization and analysis tool kit developed by
  the staff at the National Weather Service (NWS)
  office in Buffalo and the Warning Decision
  Training Branch (WDTB) in Norman, OK.
  http//www.wbuf.noaa.gov/bufkit/bufkit.html
• Weather Monitoring Digital Atmosphere
• http//www.weathergraphics.com/da/
• Download surface data, radar, watch/warning data.
• Develop and display maps of data in real time.
• Customizable maps.
• Excellent for weather monitoring local weather.
  Displays mesonet, RAWS, any stations in the
  Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System
  (MADIS).

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WFO All Hazards SupportOnsite - Portable Office

• Standard office software (Microsoft or OpenOffice
  (http//www.openoffice.org/)
• Snagit screen capture and software editor.
  (http//www.techsmith.com/)
• For a USB memory stick, PortableApps.com
• Can carry around browser, office suite,
  documentation, etc on a memory stick. Good tool
  when you only have access to the Internet through
  other personal computers.
• Can carry your own references, manuals, EF Scale
  reference for tornado surveys, station duty
  manual, etc.

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WFO SGF All Hazards SupportProducts Services
Further development of products and services
needed to support decision needs of our
customers.

• More specific mission critical information
• Confidence Level
• Risk Factor Analysis
• Impact Assessment
• PIO
• IMET

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WFO All Hazards SupportProducts Services
Products and services need to be enhanced to
provide specific mission critical information.
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WFO All Hazards SupportProducts Services
All Hazards Support through All Phases of an Event
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WFO All Hazards SupportProducts Services
Graphical Web Products Designed to Support User
Decisions
Graphical HWOs / Decision Support Graphics
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WFO All Hazards SupportProducts Services
Graphical Web Products Designed to Support User
Decisions
Briefing Pages / Weather Information Suites
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WFO All Hazards SupportProducts Services
Graphical Web Products Designed to Support User
Decisions
Media Briefings / Weather Information Packages
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WFO All Hazards SupportProducts Services
Graphical Web Products Designed to Support User
Decisions
Video Briefings
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WFO All Hazards SupportGIS Viewers and Products

• Utilize GIS viewers to enhance NWS services
• Create map farms that provide formats that
  integrate with multiple GIS viewers
• Provide tailored maps to EMs, government
  agencies and other WFOs.
• Allow non-GIS users to work with maps.
• Provides users with the big picture.
• User questions are inherently answered

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WFO All Hazards SupportWhy GIS?

• Used as a planning tool for emergency planners
• Provides common operating infrastructure that can
  be utilized between departments and multiple
  levels of government.
• Visual information dissemination analysis tool
• Map of potential hazards
• Impact analysis
• Infrastructure high impact facilities at risk
• What if map

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WFO All Hazards SupportWhy GIS?

• Two categories of maps
• Big Picture Provide situational awareness for
  Incident Commanders and other decision makers at
  the SEOC and County EOCs.
• Customized Provided First Responders and
  Emergency Staff who were in forward locations
  with mission critical maps.
• GIS can be applied to strategic tactical
  objectives

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WFO All Hazards SupportGIS Tools

• GIS Tools
• ArcView
• ArcReader
• ArcExplorer
• Google Earth
• Virtual Earth

• Provides an easy-to-use GIS platform.
• Can be very useful in internal NWS operations
• Enables the NWS to provide enhanced products and
  services that integrate meteorological and GIS
  data
• GIS enhanced datasets can be very useful during
  severe or other high impact weather events where
  the integration of GIS information is especially
  helpful.

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WFO All Hazards SupportGIS Tools
GIS benefits operational and user needs

• Radar Satellite
• Warning Polygons
• Severe Reports
• Spotters/Verification
• Impact assessment
• Flash flood / Hydro
• Fire Weather
• Obs. Sites/COOP
• Aviation
• Climate
• Situational Awareness

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WFO All Hazards Support GIS Tools

• Impact and risk assessment

• Radar Warning Polygons

Integrating radar data and warning polygons with
geographical layers promotes situational
awareness and provides an effective means of
potential impact assessment.
RIDGE radar and warning polygons to KMZ/KML files.
www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge/kmzgenerator.htm
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WFO All Hazards SupportGIS Tools

• Integrate locally created maps

Flood prone locations and low water crossings
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WFO All Hazards SupportGIS Tools

• NDFD Hazard Grids?

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WFO All Hazards SupportGIS Tools

• Hysplit
• NESDIS Hazardous Mapping System
• (http//www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/FIRE/)

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WFO All Hazards SupportGIS Tools

• Collective storm reports survey results
• Serve government agencies, emergency management,
  media the general public with a detailed
  regional hazard maps.
• Provide a consistent one stop location for the
  graphical depiction of severe weather events
• Assist post storm impact assessment and recovery
  efforts by the emergency management community,
  and local, state, and federal agencies such as
  FEMA and Homeland Security
• Effectively representing the impact of severe
  weather to the public and highlighting why the
  NWS exists.
• Support WFO's and the scientific community in
  post event analysis.
• Meeting the demand for graphics from local and
  national media.

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WFO All Hazards Support

• Andy Foster
• WFO Springfield, Missouri