Julie L. Demuth

	The Boulder WAS*ISers.

I primarily spent FY2006 working with a colleague, Eve Gruntfest, on Weather and Society * Integrated Studies (WAS*IS). WAS*IS is a grassroots movement with the vision of effecting change within the weather enterprise by fully integrating social science into meteorological research and practice in a comprehensive and sustained way. WAS*IS is working toward this vision by empowering an interdisciplinary group of practitioners, researchers, and stakeholders to forge new relationships and to use new tools and concepts for more effective socio-economic applications and evaluations of weather information and products.

When we began WAS*IS in Summer 2005, it originally was slated as a single-workshop venture. However, over the course of the year, WAS*IS received such considerable interest and support that it quickly grew into three separate workshops.

•  The Boulder WAS*IS -  The first workshop was held as two sessions in Boulder , CO , in November 2005 and March 2006. We had 23 selected participants from all across the U.S. as well as one person from France and one person from Germany .

•  The Norman WAS*IS - The second workshop was held in Norman , OK , in April 2006, with 33 "new" participants (i.e., 4 of the Norman participants also participated in either the Boulder WAS*IS beforehand or the Summer WAS*IS afterward), most of whom are part of the large weather community in Norman .

•  The Summer WAS*IS - The third workshop was again held in Boulder in July 2006, with 31 U.S. participants.

The 86 selected WAS*ISers come from a variety of disciplines such as anthropology, communications, economics, geography, meteorology, psychology, and sociology. Most are students and early-career professionals, but there are a few mid-career and senior personnel.

	The Summer WAS*ISers.

The WAS*IS workshops were devoted to two main things: (1) building an interdisciplinary community for lifelong collaboration and support, and (2) providing a toolkit for participants to use learn new tools and concepts and to build skills. Although the content of the workshops varied somewhat, below are some of the tools and topics addressed:

•  Challenges of interdisciplinary work

•  Communication (challenges, lessons learned, uncertainty, probabilistic information, new and non-traditional media and techniques, risk communication)

•  Forecasting (process, challenges, dissemination)

•  Economics

•  Public perception, decision making, response

•  Vulnerability

•  Decision support systems

•  Learning from successful integrated research projects

•  Lessons learned from past events (e.g., the Fort Collins and Big Thompson floods)

•  Forecast verification

•  Qualitative research methods

	Left to right: David Schultz (Boulder WAS*ISer and instigator of Norman WAS*IS), Eve Gruntfest (WAS*IS creator), Julie Demuth (WAS*IS creator), Sheldon Drobot (Boulder WAS*ISer and co-Summer WAS*IS organizer), and Mary Hayden (WAS*IS presenter for all 3 workshops).

The workshops also included several opportunities to openly discuss and brainstorm about specific or pressing challenges and opportunities for applying the WAS*IS principles to a meteorological problem. These discussions led to several research projects undertaken by WAS*IS participants, some of which are continuing to blossom!

Currently, at least two more WAS*IS workshops are being planned: (1) an Australian WAS*IS scheduled for January 28 - February 2, 2007 , in Mount Macedon, Australia; and (2) another Summer WAS*IS scheduled for July 2007 in Boulder, Colorado. We hope to continue the Summer WAS*IS workshops on an annual basis.

To expand upon the WAS*IS workshops, an edited volume of WAS*IS research projects is being developed. This textbook will highlight success stories of work among physical and social scientists, practitioners, and stakeholders, and that identifies successful integration of meteorology and social science. We hope to develop other means of broadening and deepening the WAS*IS community, to continue changing from what WAS to what IS the future of integrated studies in meteorology!

Conference Presentations

Julie Demuth, Eve Gruntfest, and Jeff Lazo. "Weather and Society * Integrated Studies", 86 th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society, First Symposium on Policy Research, January 21 - February 3, 2006, Atlanta, GA.

Julie Demuth, Eve Gruntfest, and Jeff Lazo. "Weather and Society * Integrated Studies", Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, March 7 - 11, 2006, Chicago , IL .

Julie Demuth, Eve Gruntfest, Gina Eosco, Tanja Fransen, and Sheldon Drobot. "What a Difference a Year Makes", 31st Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop, July 9 - 12, 2006, Boulder , CO .

Research Activities

Although WAS*IS took the vast majority of my time last year, near the end of FY2006 I also started working on a research project with two NCAR colleagues on improving communication of weather forecast uncertainty information. This is a topic that is receiving an increasing amount of interest in the atmospheric science community. We are developing and implementing a web-based survey of the U.S. public to assess how people understand and use weather forecast uncertainty information. We hope to have the survey administered and data collected by December and some initial results by mid-January.

Funding Sources

All the WAS*IS workshops are supported by the National Science Foundation through its support of the SERE Lab's Institute for the Study of Society and Environment; the ISSE/Research Applications Lab's Societal Impacts Program; and the Visiting Scientist Program. WAS*IS also receives support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's U.S. Weather Research Program.

Additional specific support for the Norman WAS*IS workshop was from the University of Oklahoma (OU) Vice President for Research; OU College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences; OU Institute for Communication Research; OU Sasaki Institute; NOAA National Severe Storm Laboratory Colloquium Series; OU Department of Geography; OU Center for Spatial Analysis; and the OU Center for Applied Social Research.

Additional specific support for the upcoming Aus WAS*IS workshop is from the Monash University Monash Sustainability Institute ( MSI ) and ARC Network for Earth System Science (ARCNESS); the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology; and Emergency Management Australia.

The research on communication of forecast uncertainty is supported by the National Science Foundation through its support of the ISSE/RAL's Societal Impacts Program.