Communicating uncertainty in severe weather forecasts.

This is a Centre for Decision Research (CDR) Seminar taking place at Leeds University Business School on Wednesday 22 November 2017

Dr Nadine Fleischhut, a research scientist at the Centre for Adaptive Rationality, Max Plank Institute for Human Development in Berlin, will be delivering the sixth presentation in the Centre for Decision Research’s 2017/18 seminar series. This seminar is co-hosted with the Sustainability Research Institute (SRI). 

Communicating uncertainty to lay audiences is as challenging as indispensible if people are to understand medical test results, risk in financial investments, or weather warnings. Dr Fleischhut will present recent results from a representative survey in Germany, which demonstrates a deficient public understanding of probabilistic weather forecasts. This was accompanied by overly high expectations about the quality of a forecast that may easily lead to a loss of trust and dangerous behavior if they are disappointed.

Secondly, Dr Fleishhut will show initial results from an ongoing longitudinal study investigating which uncertainty representations emergency managers rely upon under real operational constraints. The research team implemented different representations of probabilistic weather forecasts within an online information system operated by the German National Weather Service. By analysing web usage behaviour, they observe which representations emergency managers prefer and link the analysis to tests which representations are best understood — and could thus aid emergency managers in their decisions.

The work is part of an interdisciplinary project on the effective communication of weather warnings (WEXICOM) funded by the Hans Ertel Centre for Weather Research of the German National Weather service.  

Registration not required

For further information, please contact the Research Office at research.LUBS@leeds.ac.uk