EMERGENCY MANAGERS - INTERVIEW GUIDE

As compound hazards, landfalling tropical cyclones (LTC) pose a significant risk to public safety, bringing significant winds, flooding rains, and storm surge in their wake. In the context of Covid-19, risks for harm can become heightened as people make decisions about how to prioritize health concerns for themselves and others amid complex weather risks. When tornadoes co-occur with flash flooding during LTCs, what we call TORFFs, warnings for each can contain contradictory advice that can complicate people’s understanding of the threat that is most dangerous them: warnings for tornadoes suggest people get to the lowest part of a structure and flash flooding suggest people to get to the highest part of their home. Recent events, like Hurricanes Harvey and Florence confirm TORFF confusion can be widespread and deadly. Research by Nielsen et al (2015) estimates that over 400 such TORFFs occur across the U.S. each year. While National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters assess and warn for these threats, their core partners in broadcast meteorology and emergency management, translate warnings to help individuals decide which threats and safety protocols are most important for people to take and when. Yet, little is understood about how these experts make sense of or communicate TORFF warnings nor how the uncertainties during Covid-19 inform their knowledge about which populations are the most vulnerable. With the goal of helping NWS forecasters improve warning practices and decision support for core partners in emergency management and broadcast meteorology during compound hazards, especially for vulnerable populations in Covid-19, this project will examine how core partners conceptualize, plan for, and communicate TORFFs in LTCs. By doing so, this project will develop new knowledge about (a) how partners attend to, assess, and communicate compound hazards and how Covid-19 magnifies challenges for partners’ when giving advice to the public and planning for evacuations and shelters; and (b) how this understanding shapes and is shaped by partners’ conceptualization of changes in and indicators for the public’s vulnerability. Building on this knowledge, we will create (c) pathways research-to-operations (R2O) that result in products that can help build forecaster and core partner situational awareness and best practices for compound hazards. We use a qualitative-lead mixed methods approach to the problem, beginning with interviews with core partners in Y1 conducted after an LTC, and a national survey of core partners in coastal areas informed by initial results in Y2. Results will help us build a continuously updated database of TORFFs warnings for LTCs, which will enable future research and training for NWS forecasters and their partners. Knowledge of how NWS core partners understand and respond to threats in these contexts will contribute to a better forecaster decision support. These insights can be used to improve communication of forecast and warning risk information for different hazards at various spatial and temporal time scales and lead times, generate insights for NWS Impact Based Decision Support Services (IDSS), and help reduce community vulnerability to future compound threats.