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

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

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Miran, Seyed M
Language:English
Published: University of Akron / OhioLINK 2019
Subjects:
Industrial Engineering
Statistics
Systems Design
Behaviorial Sciences
Online Access:http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1541506688959022
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spelling ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-akron15415066889590222021-08-03T07:08:42Z Investigating Effectiveness of Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) for Severe Weather Threats Miran, Seyed M Industrial Engineering Statistics Systems Design Behaviorial Sciences 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. 2019-02-13 English text University of Akron / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1541506688959022 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1541506688959022 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: some rights reserved. It is licensed for use under a Creative Commons license. Specific terms and permissions are available from this document's record in the OhioLINK ETD Center.
collection NDLTD
language English
sources NDLTD
topic Industrial Engineering
Statistics
Systems Design
Behaviorial Sciences
spellingShingle Industrial Engineering
Statistics
Systems Design
Behaviorial Sciences
Miran, Seyed M
Investigating Effectiveness of Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) for Severe Weather Threats
author Miran, Seyed M
author_facet Miran, Seyed M
author_sort Miran, Seyed M
title Investigating Effectiveness of Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) for Severe Weather Threats
title_short Investigating Effectiveness of Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) for Severe Weather Threats
title_full Investigating Effectiveness of Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) for Severe Weather Threats
title_fullStr Investigating Effectiveness of Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) for Severe Weather Threats
title_full_unstemmed Investigating Effectiveness of Probabilistic Hazard Information (PHI) for Severe Weather Threats
title_sort investigating effectiveness of probabilistic hazard information (phi) for severe weather threats
publisher University of Akron / OhioLINK
publishDate 2019
url http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1541506688959022
work_keys_str_mv AT miranseyedm investigatingeffectivenessofprobabilistichazardinformationphiforsevereweatherthreats
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