The use of community assessment for public health emergency response to evaluate NWS warnings

Abstract

Using CASPER, we were able to obtain feedback from Burleigh county residents on a new NWS product piloted in their geographic location. CASPERs can be used to augment public feedback provided via the Web-based survey methodology typically used by NWS to gather feedback. Web-based surveys are useful since they are inexpensive to administer and generate information quickly; however, they require the participant to have an Internet connection and typically attract "weather enthusiasts" who visit NWS web pages regularly. Therefore, Web-based survey responses may not be representative of the general public, whereas CASPERs produce generalizable results and data collection can be done quickly. This is one of the first times NWS has partnered with public health to assess extreme-weather warnings. Collaborations for similar studies could be done in the future to assess other existing or new warnings, particularly with NWS's growing interest to add public health messaging to their warnings to improve the public response and hopefully prevent weather-related morbidity and mortality.