Abstract
It is estimated that about 80% of all disasters are directly tied to weather events; thus forecasting weather has become a very important scientific, economic, and political endeavor. With the development of new and enhanced technology, weather forecasting skills have improved significantly both in the United States and internationally (National Research Council [NRC], 1999, 2003). However, weather forecasting is a probabilistic science and many uncertainties still remain (see National Science Foundation [NSF], 2002). Indeed, despite significant improvements in our ability to predict the weather in the short and long-term, recent experiences with natural hazards show that we continue to confront important challenges regarding lead times, false alarm rates, the accuracy and reliability of the information that is being communicated, and in our ability to elicit the appropriate response from the local, state, and federal governments as well as the general public, as the case of Hurricane Katrina (2005) clearly demonstrated.
Thisworkwas supported primarily by the Engineering Research Centers Program of the National Science Foundation under NSF Award Number 0313747. We also want to acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for their comments and recommendations. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the NSF.
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Rodr´ıguez, H., D´ıaz, W., Santos, J.M., Aguirre, B.E. (2007). Communicating Risk and Uncertainty: Science, Technology, and Disasters at the Crossroads. In: Handbook of Disaster Research. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-32353-4_29
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