By Ed Johnson, NWS, Director of Strategic Planning and Policy
It was a pleasure to be invited to attend the NCIM Mid-year Meeting in New Orleans and an honor to be given a little time on the agenda to mention a few things that I think NCIM members might want to watch:
(1) The NOAA Science Advisory Board has a subcommittee which has been asked to give NOAA advice on how we might improve our advisory mechanisms for the weather enterprise. This committee includes two NCIM members (George Frederick and John Toohey-Morales) and could lead to something like a new advisory committee for NOAA to seek advice on our environmental information services.
(2) AMS has formed a committee, under the Commission on the Weather and Climate Enterprise, to look at the very interesting issue of how the enterprise conveys uncertainty in our products and services. (Elliott Abrams of the NCIM is one of the co-chairs of this committee.
(3) Within NWS, I think most NCIM members ought to monitor our public database of proposed changes in our services — see http://www.weather.gov/infoservicechanges/ — and you can even sign up for notification of new entries via an RSS feed (it’s so easy even I could do it). In addition to just keeping up with proposed changes in our services in general, I think NCIM members will see on this database a few entries (some there already, others coming) that show how NWS is working to incorporate new internet-based technologies like instant messaging and web video into our services to improve communications with the media and the hazards community.
(4) I am also working to increase the transparency of NWS development activities so NCIM members (and others, of course) can get more visibility into earlier steps in NWS product development — this is going to take some time, but I know it is an area of interest to at least some NCIM members.
(5) I also think NCIM members should think about keeping up with the changes being developed in the way aviation weather information is being produced, provided, and used for the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). You can keep up with NextGen on the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) web site at http://www.jpdo.gov/. I think NextGen is of interest not just for those who have business interests in aviation, but also because it is likely to create new standards and communication methods for aviation weather that will eventually be used for many other kinds of environmental information.
