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Communication
Research Themes
Selected Activities

a) In collaboration with other themes, build capacity in communicating high impact weather information through targeted workshops, conference sessions and reviews involving social science and other relevant researchers, operational staff, service providers and end users. Promulgate current capability in both the meteorological and impact community through publication of a white paper and/or special issues of journals.  


b) Improve forecast and warning communication, including uncertainty information, by identifying and sharing good practice:  

· Hold an international workshop with high impact weather and communication experts to review successes & gaps in communication across cases and regions, publish the results and design a reporting template for case studies.   

Follow up with case studies as new high impact weather events occur, drawing out lessons learned for forecasters and for decision makers. 

· Conduct subsequent international workshops to develop and periodically update communication best practices  

· Develop communication projects for researchers to work with NMHSs on how they interact with partners, including communication with vulnerable groups (channels, messages

Conduct periodic electronic surveys of NMHSs to compile and transfer internationally knowledge about communication with different audiences 

· Conduct research projects to investigate communication and interpretation and use of forecast and warning information, including uncertainty, for different hazards and international locations. 

· Initiate a series of annual or biennial training courses for operational meteorologists to raise the standard of communication, particularly of uncertainty, to both emergency managers and the public, possibly in association with the WMO Regional Training Centres. Use past cases as the basis for training exercises. 


c) In collaboration with the Vulnerability & Risk and Evaluation themes, catalogue postevent case-study evaluations, identifying similarities and differences, sources of hazard information, usage of advice in decision making and good practice in evaluation 


d) Lead the cross-cutting activity, together with impacts agencies (emergency management, health etc), to develop an international collaborative activity for the collection of social media, volunteer and other professional data to construct or validate impact models. Given the rapid evolution of internet and social media communication, this work will need to evolve as the project progresses. 

· Develop standards for data collection, including use of hashtags (e.g. #snow) 

· Develop methods of quality control and interpretation, 

· Use proactive requests for people to contribute data 

· Start narrow & simple, then compare across hazards, countries/cultures 


e) Lead a cross-cutting activity to review the influence of trust, salience, beliefs and other factors on the communication, use and application of weather information in decisionmaking and the implications for effective forecasting & warning.  


f) Lead a cross-cutting activity, in collaboration with operational meteorologists and CBS, to develop interpretation aids in high resolution deterministic & ensemble NWP and hazard predictions and improved mechanisms for communicating probabilistic information based on different user capabilities, constraints and information needs. Document the material for use in training, e.g. at WMO training centres, and as COMET (or similar) training modules. 


g) Lead a cross-cutting activity to review and publish the implications of uncertainty in weather forecasts and warnings across the whole spectrum of the work of HIWeather and how these propagate through the forecast-to-users chain to influence the ability to enhance resilience.


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