As part of the Coastal Storm Awareness Program, the New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut Sea Grant Programs supported social science research that evaluated NOAA National Weather Service storm briefing materials and their use by local officials, residents and emergency managers. The research team used community feedback on these storm warning products to recommend design changes to improve the visual and graphic clarity of the information being conveyed and enhance broader understanding of the risks being communicated.
In 2016, the NOAA National Weather Service, Eastern Region developed a new standardized storm briefing template. The purposes of the template are to 1) reduce confusion in communities served by more than one Weather Forecasting Office; 2) incorporate probabilistic forecasting; and 3) incorporate all of the design recommendations from the Sea Grant social science research project.
