FY23 WPO Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Awards
The award total* for the 10 selected projects is: $4 M in cooperative agreements.
Recent societal impacts from hurricanes, floods, snow storms, and wildfires, shows a great need to understand the intersection of people and meteorology. The Social Science Program funds research that plays a critical role in connecting the improvements of NOAA’s weather forecast information to the public’s growing forecast needs.
Our team works across the public, private, and academic sectors of the weather community to find and fund research to meet these goals and improve forecast delivery for the public. Through our Notice of Funding Opportunities, we select research proposals to meet our program objectives. Those objectives are based on priorities and critical areas for forecast improvement.
The award total* for the 10 selected projects is: $4 M in cooperative agreements.
How do different racial and socioeconomic groups in the United States receive, understand, and respond to severe weather information? A new study by three NOAA…
We have active funding calls with the Natural Hazards Center on Tornado-Ready and Wildfire-Ready Research Quick Response Grants: WPO SSP is excited to share that…
In response to the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) and National Weather Service (NWS) bi-lateral meeting 2021, the WPO Forecasting A Continuum of Environmental Threats (FACETs) Program funded a project to assess the current program and plan for a future iteration of the program. WPO hired Toffler Associates,…
To advance NOAA’s social science data needs, WPO’s Social Science Program partnered with the National Hazard Center—with support from the National Science Foundation, and in collaboration with the National Weather Service and National Severe Storms Laboratory— to develop the Weather Ready Quick Response Research Initiative to support social science event-based…
This project examined how end -users, such as forecasters, emergency managers, and the American public interpret and comprehend probabilistic tropical cyclone information. Using a concept known as numeracy, or one’s ability to use and understand numerical information, this study, in combination with past research, suggests that probability information helps people…
The goal of the SPARK is to help increase visibility and impact of funded research, and allow others to build upon and use this research.
Click below to access WPO's current and past funded social science research.
Explore the SPARK NowLead Principal Investigator & Affiliation:
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
This two-year project builds on previous NOAA-funded research to improve the development, testing, and evaluation of different methods that can be used to collect local vulnerability data from forecasters, emergency managers, and other National Weather Service (NWS) core partners. These local data on vulnerable people, places, and things can then be used to populate a…
Lead Principal Investigator & Affiliation:
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
This two-part, mixed-methods research project seeks to discover how emergency managers’ (EMs) differing individual and job characteristics influence how effectively they use the National Weather Service’s (NWS) forecasts and Impact-Based Decision Support (IDSS). Primary project outputs include identifying particular EM characteristics that should be considered to help construct more effective IDSS, and a method whereby…
Lead Principal Investigator & Affiliation:
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
This project aims to create a scientifically rigorous and operationally feasible (i.e., could be deployed by National Weather Service Weather Forecast Offices) survey system for collecting data on the publics’ perception and response to four different hazards: tornadoes, severe thunderstorms (i.e., those with winds over 70 miles per hour), flash floods, and winter weather. The…
Lead Principal Investigator & Affiliation:
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
This research project aims to compare the protective action tendencies of people living in areas of the US that commonly experience severe convective weather to those living in regions less prone to it. By interviewing survivors of tornadoes and high-end thunderstorms across various US regions, the researchers hope to better understand the common and differing…
Lead Principal Investigator & Affiliation:
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
This project seeks to identify, develop, and test new metrics that will measure the effectiveness of Impact-Based Decision Support Services (IDSS) with National Weather Service (NWS) core partners by creating a yearly survey called the Extreme Weather and Emergency Management Survey (WxEm Survey). The survey will collect data on how emergency managers use NOAA/NWS data,…
Lead Principal Investigator & Affiliation:
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
Every community of stakeholders has its “go/no go” action thresholds, and identifying these risk thresholds and incorporating them into forecast visualizations is critical for maximizing the utility of probabilistic hazard information (PHI) for Impact-Based Decision Support Services (IDSS). Therefore, this research project aims to survey various National Weather Service (NWS) Western Region core partners and…
Lead Principal Investigator & Affiliation:
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
This project focuses on the challenges of communicating warnings for compound tornado and flash flooding (TORFF) hazards that occur during landfalling tropical cyclones (LTC), which have been even more complicated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the project aims to understand how weather experts conceptualize, plan for, and communicate TORFFs during LTCs. The project will use…
Lead Principal Investigator & Affiliation:
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
This interdisciplinary research project aims to support ongoing efforts to measure the operational performance and delivery of Impact-Based Decision Support Services (IDSS) at the National Weather Service (NWS). The project will assess how (1) different NWS personnel (e.g., Meteorologists and Hydrologists in Charge, Warning Coordination Meteorologists, and Service Coordination Hydrologists) define IDSS, (2) IDSS is…
Lead Principal Investigator & Affiliation:
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
This project features a multi-departmental collaboration with The University of Miami (UM), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), NOAA National Weather Service, and NOAA Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. This two-year, mixed-methods, multi-sample project seeks to develop a translatable process for NOAA to harness public feedback, rethink and redesign weather risk graphics for different types…
Lead Principal Investigator & Affiliation:
Co-Principal Investigator(s):
This project will develop a virtual reality simulation, alongside education and training materials, that will help coastal residents and decision makers make better informed decisions. This simulation will also help these individuals take steps to protect lives and livelihoods in vulnerable coastal communities by heightening risk perceptions and increasing an understanding of the ways in…
Weather Ready Instrument and Data Publications (2021) – This special call for Weather Ready Research with the Natural Hazard Center supported the publication of social science and multidisciplinary data, data collection instruments, and research protocols for natural hazards and disaster research via the DesignSafe CyberInfrastructure.
Social Science Research-to-Applications Coordinator
FACETS Program Coordinator
Social Science Program Coordinator
Social Science Deputy Program Manager
VORTEX Program Coordinator and Social Scientist
Division Chief - Science, Technology, and Society
IT Project Manager
Literature
Annotated Bibliographies
If you are unfamiliar with an annotated bibliography, it is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents about a certain topic. The purpose of these bibliographies is to increase awareness of journal articles that exist on a certain topic by pulling together a variety of journal articles in one place.
Bibliography on Uncertainty and Probability Communication
Bibliography on Tornado Warnings: Delivery, Economics, and Public Perception
Bibliography on Social Science and Fire Weather (Coming Soon)
Uncertainty and Probability Communication: Past, Present, and Future (AMS 2020)