How emergency managers (mis?)interpret forecasts.

Emergency managers who work on floods and other weather-related hazards constitute critical frontline responders to disasters. Yet, while these professionals operate in a realm rife with uncertainty related to forecasts and other unknowns, the influence of uncertainty on their decision-making is poorly understood. Consequently, a national-level survey of county emergency managers in the United States was administered to examine how they interpret forecast information, using hypothetical climate, flood, and weather scenarios to simulate their responses to uncertain information. The study revealed that even emergency managers with substantial experience take decision shortcuts and make biased choices, just as do members of the general population. Their choices vary depending on such features as the format in which probabilistic forecasts are presented and whether outcomes are represented as gains or losses. In sum, forecast producers who consider these decision processes when developing and communicating forecasts could help to improve flood preparation and potentially reduce disaster losses.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Disasters. The Journal of Disaster Studies, Policy and Management

• Publication date

  2018-06-12

• Fields of study

  Political Science, Medicine, Business, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/disa.12293PMID 29893434
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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