While the weather forecast enterprise has dramatically increased its capabilities to provide accurate forecasts of weather hazards at greater lead times and finer scales, a growing body of research demonstrates that people have a difficult time understanding what the impacts of those hazards will be. Even worse, people find it difficult to impossible to conceive of what the impact means for their unique situation. Very few people have the technical background to assess their vulnerability and interpret probabilistic forecasts of hazards to calculate the risks of specific consequences. The HurricaneRiskCalculator® web app is being created to fill these gaps.

The HurricaneRiskCalculator® web app is a public-facing decision support tool based on a probabilistic risk framework that intersects real-time tropical cyclone wind hazard predictions with information from a structural vulnerability assessment. Through this intersection of hazard, vulnerability, and exposure, the tool calculates the risks of various consequences, such as different degrees of structural damage and whether the structure will be habitable following the tropical cyclone.

Learn more about the project: wxrisk.ucar.edu

NCAR & UCAR News: NCAR scientists recruiting the public to help ground-truth hurricane risk app