Weather Risk Information and Impacts for Schools Systems Kit

The vision of a Weather-Ready Nation is achieved through the synthesis of the large number of
NOAA products and services into meaningful and actionable information for community
stakeholders and individual populations. Many community stakeholders such as school
administrators find themselves in high-stakes weather-related decision-making situations where
they are left to their self-interpretation of forecast information or model output. This non-specialist
self-interpretation can be dangerous and may be influenced by source bias, hype, or other
situational-dependent factors and lead to decisions that impact hundreds to thousands of members
in our communities. This Phase II effort seeks to address improving the communication of
probabilistic and deterministic forecast information used in school system closure decision-making
with the prototype development of the Weather Risk Information and Impacts for School Systems
Kit (WxRISK) software application. WxRISK provides spatial weather hazard risk information
customized to a school district and includes features to use pre-existing school communication
channels to relay critical weather forecast information to parents ahead of impactful weather
events. This software system will address the Weather Enterprise’s goal of public-private
partnerships to increase awareness of NOAA products and services and build a more Weather
Ready and resilient nation.