Communicating weather risk and uncertainty: a journey over the last decade at Victoria's State Control Centre — Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
  1. Schedule
  2. 23. Automation and the changing role of the forecaster
  3. Communicating weather risk and uncertainty: a journey over the last decade at Victoria's State Control Centre

Communicating weather risk and uncertainty: a journey over the last decade at Victoria's State Control Centre (#213)

Kevin Parkyn 1 , Tim Wiebusch 2 , Andy Ackland 3 , Natalie Tostovrsnik 4 , Timothy McKern 5
  1. Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, VICTORIA, Australia
  2. Director Operations, State Emergency Service, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  3. Bushfire Risk Assessment Unit - Strategy, Capability and Innovation Division , Department of Environment, Land, Water & Planning, East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  4. Predictive Services, Department of Environment, Land, Water & Planning, East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  5. Fire & Emergency Management Predictive Services, Country Fire Authority, East Burwood, Victoria, Australia

A Bureau of Meteorology meteorologist has been embedded in Victoria’s Emergency Centre, (known as the State Control Centre) for a decade to provide weather briefing services to emergency managers, operational practitioners and emergency personnel working at an incident. Emergency management organisations are adept at utilising risk information for preparedness and making decisions in an emergency and their ‘appetite’ for weather associated risk to assist in this decision making process is unsatiated and growing. This paper provides a unique insight into the journey of communicating the risk and associated uncertainty of high impact weather to the emergency management sector, particularly the role of ‘value adding’ by the meteorologist to automated and quality controlled weather forecast guidance. The paper also draws on parallels with automated  fire behaviour predictions provided by Phoenix Rapid Fire that are displayed on Victoria’s Emergency Management Common Operating Portal for Incident Controllers to make decisions.

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