A method for investigating real-time distributed weather forecaster-emergency manager interaction

Researchers have conducted few studies of the joint decision-making processes of forecasters and emergency managers during severe weather events. Emergency managers are difficult to study due to lack of standardization and the jurisdictional nature of their work This research describes an operational concept, requirements, design, and implementation of a forecaster, communicator and emergency computer system and work flow that support the study of forecaster-emergency interactions. The experiment supported by the system and workflow assume that forecasters are available to be experiment participants (foregoing their typical jobs responsibilities) while emergency managers must continue to support their job responsibilities while simultaneously considering the experimental protocol. Thus the operational concept imposes limited additional efforts on the part of the emergency managers. Toward that end, we take advantage of communication methods such as Twitter as well as those already used in the field (such as chat). Limitations of this current effort and ideas for future work are also presented.