Urban Rain Rate Dashboard - Improving Delivery of Weather Prediction Center Precipitation Products

This data includes focus group protocols including scenarios and discussion questions, survey instruments, and focus group transcripts and survey data related to the “Improving Delivery of Weather Prediction Center Precipitation Products” project. This project was funded by a $1,211,082 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (NA23OAR4590137) to advance social science research work around the Weather Prediction Center’s precipitation forecast products. The grant supports a four-year (02-01-2023 to 01-31-2027) mixed-methods social science research study. This data comes from the portion of the study that focused on a new Urban Rain Rate Dashboard (URRD) product being developed by WPC. The research team focused on three main research questions: How will professional users incorporate an Urban Rain Rate Dashboard into decision-making?; How do users want to access the dashboard, and in which circumstances?; What design and delivery elements can maximize the utility of the dashboard in decision-making for users? Methods involved working with the WPC and Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) to create location-specific scenarios for each focus group based on past events and included the URRD prototype and several re-designed mock-ups for testing. Six 2-hour virtual focus groups were held in fall 2024 focused in the metro areas of Houston, TX, Denver, CO, Atlanta, GA, Los Angeles, CA, New Orleans, LA, and New York City. Sessions focused on identifying the information needs, gaps, barriers and opportunities in using and understanding the URRD, with the purpose of informing recommendations to improve the usability of these products by end users. Participants were recruited through email and phone with initial contact lists provided by WFO partners. Participants included city officials, emergency management, water resource and flood professionals. During each focus group, participants completed a pre-session survey (which included acknowledgement of informed consent), participated in a facilitated discussion around the scenario, and completed a post-session survey. Pre-session surveys gathered demographic information and flood experience, and post-session surveys asked about specific product usefulness and feedback. Focus group discussion was elicited with questions including: What decisions are you making and when are you making them when preparing for heavy precipitation? and What forecast or weather information do you look for when concerned about urban flooding? And then focusing on each product: Is this information useful?; How would you use this information?; Would you seek this information out?; Would you share this with others?; What changes could improve this product? Quantitative (survey) and qualitative (focus group transcripts/inductive coding using MaxQDA) analysis informed findings shared with the WPC and subsequent revisions to the products. A follow-up online survey was administered after the research team revised some of the products in response to the findings. The research team, including Rachel Hogan Carr, Dr. Kathryn Semmens, Keri Maxfield, and Patrick Painter (all of Nurture Nature Center) and Dr. Burrell Montz (emeritus from East Carolina University), have compiled and shared recommendations to NOAA/WPC to inform iteration on the prototype design. The data provided here include the focus group protocols (scenarios and questions), the pre and post session survey questions, the follow-up survey questions, and the raw survey responses and focus group transcripts (anonymized).