Boater Safety: Communicating Weather Forecast Information to High-Stakes End Users

Savelli, Sonia; Joslyn, Susan

doi:10.1175/wcas-d-11-00025.1

Cited by 28 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Several studies (Morss et al ., , ; Lazo et al ., ; Joslyn and Savelli, ; Savelli and Joslyn, ; Peachey et al ., ) show that most people are inclined to assign a certain range of uncertainty to a single‐value forecast provided by a deterministic model: uncertainty is anticipated by the user even when such information is not intentionally supplied.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Communication and interpretation of regional weather forecasts: a survey of the Italian public

et al. 2014

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ABSTRACT:The aim of the present study is to contribute to the correctness and effectiveness of weather forecast communication, the importance of which has been steadily growing along with the improvement in numerical weather prediction models and methods as well as the general awareness about the increase of extreme events within a context of global climate change. An extensive survey was conducted among the general users of the weather forecasts issued by the regional meteorological service of Tuscany, Italy (LaMMA Consortium), which resulted in 2388 volunteers responding to the questions aimed at better understanding of how people access, interpret and use weather forecasts. The survey also includes some items investigated in previous research, allowing comparison with similar findings in other countries. The most critical issue concerns the uncertainty information, investigated with the main aim of verifying the existence and relevance of inferential mechanisms in the interpretation of weather icons and maps used in LaMMA forecasts to assess uncertainty. The present study also discusses users' interpretations of the probability of precipitation forecasts and their preferences on how forecast uncertainty is conveyed. Results show that, even if the Italian public is accustomed to strictly deterministic weather forecasts, people attribute uncertainty to them on their own even if lacking any explicit indication, thus suggesting the need to supplement the existing forecasts with both graphical and textual information about uncertainty, particularly in the case of precipitation forecasts.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Communication and interpretation of regional weather forecasts: a survey of the Italian public

et al. 2014

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“…People realize that weather forecasts involve uncertainty even when they are presented as deterministic and attempt to estimate the uncertainty themselves . Indeed, everyday users anticipate a wide range of values for deterministic forecasts and a high FA rate for weather warnings, and they regard extreme forecasts as exaggerations . As a result of these intuitions, people may actually underestimate the risk in some situations if a valid uncertainty estimate is not provided.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cry Wolf Effect and Weather‐Related Decision Making

2015

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Despite improvements in forecasting extreme weather events, noncompliance with weather warnings among the public remains a problem. Although there are likely many reasons for noncompliance with weather warnings, one important factor might be people's past experiences with false alarms. The research presented here explores the role of false alarms in weather-related decision making. Over a series of trials, participants used an overnight low temperature forecast and advice from a decision aid to decide whether to apply salt treatment to a town's roads to prevent icy conditions or take the risk of withholding treatment, which resulted in a large penalty when freezing temperatures occurred. The decision aid gave treatment recommendations, some of which were false alarms, i.e., treatment was recommended but observed temperatures were above freezing. The rate at which the advice resulted in false alarms was manipulated between groups. Results suggest that very high and very low false alarm rates led to inferior decision making, but that lowering the false alarm rate slightly did not significantly affect compliance or decision quality. However, adding a probabilistic uncertainty estimate in the forecasts improved both compliance and decision quality. These findings carry implications about how weather warnings should be communicated to the public.

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“…Expressing the uncertainty in forecasts can be useful to experienced users of weather information, helping to improve decision‐making based on those forecasts (Nadav‐Greenberg and Joslyn, ; Joslyn and LeClerc, ). For example, Savelli and Joslyn () found that boaters in the Puget Sound area of Washington State may benefit from calibrated forecasts of uncertainty because they are then able to make their own assessment of risk, based on boat size.…”

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confidence: 99%