emily laidlaw
Emily Laidlaw in the Rocky Mountains, Summer 2007.
In FY07, Emily continued updating, organizing and publicizing the Societal Impacts Program's (SIP) collection of community information resources. She also provided support for Weather and Society*Integrated Studies (WAS*IS) activities and assumed the role of webmaster for SIP and WAS*IS Web sites. Emily also participated in research related to the value of current and improved forecasts and disaster loss estimation.
Community Outreach and Workshops
At the beginning of FY07, Emily implemented Weather and Society Watch (http://www.sip.ucar.edu/news), a quarterly newsletter aimed at fostering discussion among policy makers, the research community, and the general public about societal impacts, weather, and weather forecasting and WxSoc (http//www.sip.ucar.edu/wxsoc.jsp), a newsgroup for societal impacts researchers, policy makers, and other interested parties. She also oversaw the initial updating of the Extreme Weather Sourcebook (http://www.sip.ucar.edu/sourcebook), a database of societal statistics for extreme weather events and the Societal Aspects of Weather Web site (http://www.sip.ucar.edu/socasp), a clearinghouse of online societal impacts resources.
Emily is continuing to work on streamlining both the SIP and WAS*IS Web sites to better serve their users and will assist with the planning of upcoming WAS*IS workshops and curriculum, in an effort to support SIP's goal of building a community of researchers and practitioners engaged in developing knowledge on societal aspects of weather information.
Research Highlights
Emily took the lead on planning and implementing the Transportation Individual Sector Sensitivity Assessment (ISSA-T), a broad assessment of the transportation sector's sensitivity to weather aimed at better understanding how the sector uses and values weather forecast information. This assessment, which also involves the research and efforts of Jeff Lazo and Julie Demuth, will improve our understanding of how the transportation sector is affected by weather and what weather forecast information the sector deems useful, as well as help improve the provision of weather forecast information and support public investments in weather observing and forecasting systems. More generally, this project will help establish reliable methods for assessing the use and value of weather information in all economic sectors.
Emily is also working with Nathaniel Bushek, a student research assistant for SIP, on a project looking at the problems with the current disaster loss estimation practices.
Funding Sources
Research on the value of weather information and on disaster loss estimation is supported by the National Science Foundation through its support of the ISSE/RAL's Societal Impacts Program, as well as funding from the U.S. Weather Research Program (USWRP) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
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.