12th Symposium on Building a Weather-Ready Nation: Enhancing Our Nation's Readiness, Responsiveness, and Resilience to High Impact Weather Events

Abstract Information

Abstracts are closed! The deadline was 31 August 2023 at 11:59 PM EDT.

Abstract Fee and Author Instructions
All presenters must also register for the meeting.

View the Program

The 12th Symposium on Building a Weather-Ready Nation: Enhancing Our Nation’s Readiness, Responsiveness, and Resilience to High Impact Weather Events is sponsored by the American Meteorological Society and organized by the AMS Board on Societal Impacts.

Call for Papers

Papers for the 12th Symposium on Building a Weather-Ready Nation: Enhancing Our Nation’s Readiness, Responsiveness, and Resilience to High Impact Weather Events are solicited on the following:

  • The Intersection of Climate and Weather
    • Abstracts that specifically relate to weather and climate concerns and actions in a changing Earth system environment. 
    • Abstracts that highlight connections between extreme weather events and climate change, efforts in public education about climate trends and how they impact daily weather patterns, building resilient communities, and legislative/policy implications for weather and climate. 
    • Abstracts that tell stories about a Climate-Ready Nation efforts are highly encouraged.
    • Abstracts related to legislative and policy implications for weather and climate (e.g., Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act funds).
    • Abstracts related to how STEM education and faith-based knowledge can be applied together to solve knowledge gaps and promote local, state, and national collaborations.
    • Abstracts related to the integration of faith-based knowledge and science education to promote and improve STEM education.
  • Implications of reliable tornado lead times increasing over the coming decades:
    • Abstracts involving further social science efforts to understand decisions with longer lead times, actionable and equitable communication of warnings, possible culture changes to tornado warnings, IDSS implications and end-user decision making, Enterprise adoption and private sector implications, and implications for vulnerable populations.
  • Reducing the barriers to natural disaster mitigation:
    • Abstracts involving socio-economic inequalities resulting in action or lack of action in disasters, improvement and/or enforcement of building codes, prioritization of funding in most vulnerable areas, SME and policymaker collaboration, the role or obligation of builders, real estate agents, etc., to educate buyers on hazard risks, or battling the culture of inaction.
  • Reducing communication access barriers across the weather enterprise
    • Abstracts involving language translation technologies, further expansion of capabilities of WEA and other warning dissemination tools for Limited English Proficiency persons, immersing weather expertise and WRN concepts into local communities and/or K-12 education and leveraging community partnerships for mutual resource sharing.
  • Addressing mental health as a social vulnerability:
    • Abstracts involving inclusion of mental health impacts in warning/watch information, normalizing the discussion of mental health within the Enterprise and end-users, innovations in mental health inclusion in outreach/messaging, usage of jargon and specific terminology in contributing to anxiety, involving mental health experts in messaging development.
  • Public Safety Weather Education Assessment, Training, and Needs
    • Abstracts related to programs, initiatives, or designed programs/courses that teach emergency management and public safety personnel meteorological topics, tools, or products. (OK-FIRST, ETC)
    • Abstracts on instances that showed lack of weather training or education by public safety, emergency management, and decision-makers in both public and private sector.
    • Abstracts related to topics that need to be improved upon regarding emergency management education and training (Wireless Emergency Alerts).
    • Abstracts related to emergency management misrepresentation of weather data or lessons learned due to misinterpretation of weather information.
    • Abstracts related to what future training programs could look like, especially in the world of FACETS and future operational meteorological forecast product change.
  • Weather Continuity of Operations (Internal)
    • Abstracts focused on efforts to increase the internal preparedness of private and government weather operations.
    • Abstracts highlighting continuity of operations, operational business continuity, IT business continuity, and disaster recovery.
    • Abstracts focused on internal preparedness and continuity initiatives, NOT related to disaster preparedness projects or outreach for partner organizations
    • Abstracts related to the planning and usage of mutual aid resources (personnel, supplies, and tools) among meteorological, hydrological, and climatological organizations in the weather community.
  • Benefits of a diverse and inclusive weather enterprise
    • Abstracts relating to how diversity and inclusion in our Enterprise will help make the Nation more Weather Ready.
    • Abstracts related to success stories and concrete benefits of how diversity and inclusion has led to a more prepared community and Nation.
  • Use of Data to Build a more resilient and Weather Ready Nation
    • Abstracts and topics focused on how communities can increase resilience to the impacts of weather events using Open Data such as NOAA’s Open Data Dissemination program
    • Topics highlighting the impact of open data for community planning and mitigation of severe weather events
    • Abstracts related to cloud optimized data formats
    • Abstracts related to community collaboration through data accessibility and data usage for informed decision-making
  • Private Facility Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Mitigation
    • Abstracts related to private sector and facility preparedness planning, actions, drills, exercises, and readiness from all weather-related hazards
    • Topics related to private sector or facility mitigation efforts and how private sector mitigation can positively impact community resilience
    • Abstracts involving case studies or past research that shows preparedness improvement needs and how Weather Ready Nation efforts can enhance workplace preparedness

Special Session:

  • WRN Asks: What If…?
    • Building off the success of last year’s session of the same name, this “reverse panel” session will cover topics pertaining to the future of the Weather Enterprise. Chosen moderators will initially propose “What if” scenarios to the audience for 3-5 minutes, then transition to a moderator role for discussion with the audience on the implications of those scenarios. If you’d be interested in proposing a What if… scenario to the Program Chairs, please send them an email (listed below).

Joint Sessions

Benefits of a diverse and inclusive weather enterprise (Joint with the Fifth Symposium on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion)

Conference Contacts

For additional information, please contact the program chairs:  Ashley Morris ([email protected]) Trevor Boucher ([email protected]) Amber Liggett ([email protected]) Tom Bedard ([email protected]) Danielle Nagele ([email protected])