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Investigating Effectiveness of Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) for Severe Weather Threats

Miran, Seyed M
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1541506688959022

Abstract Details

, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, Engineering.
Currently, forecasters at National Weather Services (NWS) use a tool, WarnGen, to issue deterministic warnings in form of polygons based on meteorological analysis. Due to disadvantages of these binary warnings, researchers are developing a new tool, Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI), to convey uncertainty information in the form of probabilistic swaths. The current research investigated effectiveness of the probabilistic weather information for a tornado threat. Three experiments were conducted and a first-hand data-set, which had been collected after three consecutive tornadoes in Oklahoma City metropolitan area in 2013, was used to fulfill the research aims. It was found that color-coding, specifically using different colors denoting different levels of uncertainty, is the most effective approach to convey the uncertainty information about tornado occurrence. The percentage of people who, after receiving the static weather information, would immediately take shelter increases exponentially as the threat gets closer to them. It was shown that when the lead time for the information recipients is less than 20 minutes and the likelihood of the threat occurrence greater than 60%, in such highly dangerous scenarios the information recipients are expected to take immediate shelter. The static probabilistic information elicits appropriate protective action from more people, compared to using WarnGen polygons. To analyze the multivariate ordinal data, an R statistical package, “BayMor”, was created and argued that using it renders more accurate results, compared with the statistical methods that are commonly used in the field. Presenting dynamic displays of probabilistic information of five hypothetical tornado scenarios to subjects on their smartphones showed that proximity to the tornado, likelihood of threat occurrence, interaction between these two factors, and being inside vs. outside of the risk area play a significant role in person’s decision-making. This study illustrated that regardless of a tornado’s trajectory, as a moving probabilistic swath, gets closer to the information recipients, approximately 88% of the participants would take protective action before being impacted by the probabilistic zone with more than 40% chance of the tornado occurrence. This study corroborates previous relevant research that providing probabilistic hazard information and letting people make decisions based upon their own criteria could enhance warnings’ effectiveness. Investigating the effect of people’s sociodemographic characteristic, tornado experience, and environmental factors on their protective actions in real tornado events and comparing it with those of using PHI’s probabilistic information showed that PHI`s feature in showing the possible tornado’s path in advance of a threat occurrence can lead to more appropriate prediction of people’s protective behavior by emergency managers and a higher public safety people’s protective behavior by emergency managers and a higher public safety.
Chen Ling, Dr. (Advisor)
Chen Ling, Dr. (Committee Chair)
Shengyong Wang , Dr. (Committee Member)
Sergio Felicelli , Dr. (Committee Member)
Sujay Datta , Dr. (Committee Member)
Ping Yi , Dr. (Committee Member)
Behaviorial Sciences; Industrial Engineering; Statistics; Systems Design

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Miran, S. M. (n.d.). Investigating Effectiveness of Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) for Severe Weather Threats [Doctoral dissertation, University of Akron]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1541506688959022

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Miran, Seyed M. Investigating Effectiveness of Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) for Severe Weather Threats. University of Akron, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1541506688959022.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Miran, Seyed M. "Investigating Effectiveness of Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) for Severe Weather Threats." Doctoral dissertation, University of Akron. Accessed APRIL 26, 2024. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1541506688959022

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

akron1541506688959022
282
© , some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Investigating Effectiveness of Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) for Severe Weather Threats by Seyed M Miran is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by University of Akron and OhioLINK.