Warnings

Warnings
Author: Michael Smith
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2010
Genre: Meteorological services
ISBN: 1608320340

From the heart of tornado alley, Smith takes us into the eye of America's most devastating storms and behind the scenes of some of the world's most renowned scientific institutions to uncover the relationship between mankind and the weather.

Severe Weather Warnings: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Severe Weather Warnings: An Interdisciplinary Approach
Author: William Donner
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2022-08-24
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 3031050312

This book offers a comprehensive description and analysis of natural hazard warnings, drawing on perspectives from the social sciences, physical sciences, and interdisciplinary fields such as disaster studies to articulate a distinction between traditional warnings and what might be called interdisciplinary warnings. Traditional warnings approach warning technology, design, and application from a principally scientific and technical perspective. Human factors, while considered, often are of secondary concern. Interdisciplinary warnings, on the other hand, maintain a critical emphasis on the technical merits of warning systems, but also ask, “Will psychological and community factors such as culture and structure shape how the system is used, and, if so, can this information be incorporated into system design preemptively to make it more effective?” Given the absence of systematic work on interdisciplinary warnings, a book-length monograph discussing and synthesizing knowledge from the various fields focused on warnings and warning response is of critical importance to both academics and practitioners. Broadly conceived, the book presents readers with an in-depth overview of warnings, interdisciplinary research, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The book holds appeal for a very broad audience: scholars; practitioners; and academic, vocational, and technical instructors both in University and non-University settings. It is of interest to academic scholars due to the interdisciplinary treatment of warnings as well as the general presentation of up-to-date scholarship on warning theory. Additionally, scholars interested in interdisciplinary work in general and those focusing on disaster warnings find within the volume a framework for developing collaborative research partnerships with those from other disciplines. As well, the book offers practitioners --emergency managers, mitigation specialists, planners, etc. --a more comprehensive perspective on emergency response in practice, allowing for better development and application of warning policy. Finally, the book appeals to instructors both inside and outside the academy. The authors envision the book useful to professors teaching both graduate and undergraduate-level courses in Sociology of Disaster, Emergency Management Planning, Homeland Security, Disaster Response, Disaster Mitigation, and Business Continuity and Crisis Management. A robust market also exists among professional organizations, perhaps most notably FEMA, which offers countless online and in-person training courses via the National Training Program, Emergency Management Institute (EMI), and other venues.

Towards the “Perfect” Weather Warning

Towards the “Perfect” Weather Warning
Author: Brian Golding
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2022-06-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030989895

This book is about making weather warnings more effective in saving lives, property, infrastructure and livelihoods, but the underlying theme of the book is partnership. The book represents the warning process as a pathway linking observations to weather forecasts to hazard forecasts to socio-economic impact forecasts to warning messages to the protective decision, via a set of five bridges that cross the divides between the relevant organisations and areas of expertise. Each bridge represents the communication, translation and interpretation of information as it passes from one area of expertise to another and ultimately to the decision maker, who may be a professional or a member of the public. The authors explore the partnerships upon which each bridge is built, assess the expertise and skills that each partner brings and the challenges of communication between them, and discuss the structures and methods of working that build effective partnerships. The book is ordered according to the “first mile” paradigm in which the decision maker comes first, and then the production chain through the warning and forecast to the observations is considered second. This approach emphasizes the importance of co-design and co-production throughout the warning process. The book is targeted at professionals and trainee professionals with a role in the warning chain, i.e. in weather services, emergency management agencies, disaster risk reduction agencies, risk management sections of infrastructure agencies. This is an open access book.

Severe Thunderstorms and Tornadoes in the United States

Severe Thunderstorms and Tornadoes in the United States
Author: Peter Folger
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 27
Release: 2011-04-10
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1437987540

Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes affect communities across the U.S. every year, causing fatalities, destroying property and crops, and disrupting businesses. Tornadoes are the most destructive products of severe thunderstorms. Damages from violent tornadoes seem to be increasing, similar to the trend for other natural hazards in part due to changing population, demographics, and more weather-sensitive infrastructure and some analysts indicate that losses of $1 billion or more from single tornado events are becoming more frequent. Insurance industry analysts state that tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, and related weather events have caused nearly 57%, on average, of all insured catastrophe losses in the U.S. in any given year since 1953. Contents of this report: (1) Overview; (2) Issues for Congress: A Focus on Local Warnings and Forecasts for the National Weather Service; Mitigation: The National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program; Reauthorizing the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program; Climate Change and Severe Weather: The April and May 2011 Tornados: A Link to Climate Change?; Other Factors Contributing to Risk From Tornadoes; Forecasting and Warning: The Role of the National Weather Service; Summary and Conclusions; Appendix: Risk from Severe Thunderstorms and Tornadoes. Map and tables. This is a print on demand report.