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Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology

In Their Shoes: Flash Flood Decision-Making Under Forecast Uncertainty

In Their Shoes: Flash Flood Decision-Making Under Forecast Uncertainty

Day 2 Session 2 (1:30PM)

Presenters:

Katie van Werkhoven (RTI)
Schuyler DeBree (RTI)
Hannah Lohman (RTI)
Yu-Fen Huang (University of Hawaii)

This interactive workshop places participants in the role of an emergency management team responding to a rapidly evolving flash flood event in a mountain community. Using a realistic, time-stepped scenario inspired by real events, participants will receive uncertain, incomplete, and sometimes conflicting forecast and observational information and must make high-stakes decisions under time pressure.

Participants will decide whether to issue warnings, close roads, or evacuate vulnerable areas while grappling with real-world operational constraints. The workshop is designed to give scientists and model developers first-hand experience with emergency decision-making under uncertainty.

Rather than focusing on model performance in isolation, the session highlights the human, institutional, and timing factors that shape how forecasts are actually used. A structured debrief connects the experience to forecast design, uncertainty communication, verification and evaluation practices, and CIROH and NOAA research priorities.

Workshop Slides

Learning Outcomes:

  • Describe how emergency management decisions are made under uncertainty, time pressure, and incomplete information
  • Identify gaps between forecast system outputs and decision-maker needs
  • Recognize the operational costs of latency, ambiguity, and overconfidence in forecast guidance
  • Articulate how forecast evaluation, product design, and uncertainty communication can better support real-world decisions
  • Apply a decision-centered perspective to the research, development, and evaluation of hydrologic and meteorological forecast systems

Prerequisites:

  • Knowledge:
    • No specific technical prerequisites required
    • Intended audience includes hydrologic and meteorological scientists, model developers, forecasters, and applied researchers
    • Familiarity with flood forecasting concepts is helpful but not required.
  • Software & Data:
    • None required
    • This is a facilitated, scenario-based, role-playing workshop (not a coding or software tutorial)
    • All materials will be provided as PDFs or printed handouts

Additional Notes:

This workshop directly supports CIROH’s mission to bridge research and operations by focusing on the decision context in which forecasts are used. It complements technical sessions on modeling, data, flood inundation mapping, and evaluation by emphasizing the human and institutional factors that determine real-world impact.

The scenario will be based on a real flash flood setting (e.g., North Carolina, Vermont, or Hawaii), reflecting regions with active CIROH and NOAA stakeholder engagement.

This workshop is designed to be:

  • Highly interactive
  • Cross-disciplinary
  • Memorable and perspective-shifting
  • Directly relevant to both research and operational participants