Decision-making aspects in weather forecasting Training towards expertise Eumetcal 6th workshop WMO, Geneva Dec 1 st, 2010 Erik Hagemark

Is decision-making important?

Courtesy Magnus Ovhed

What characteristics does an expert weather forecaster have?

Meteorologisk institutt met.no Presentation outline - Crash course in cognitive psychology - Studies of weather forecasters - Exercises

Competence vs expertise Competence ability to produce and deliver weather forecasts Involves basic analytical and meteorological skills Expertise Fluent, flexible Intuitive ‏ Involves cognitive skills

Forecaster dependencies Cognitive ”tools” Science (predictability)‏ Data and workstation

Name some cognitive skills

Noticing patterns Seeking information Meaning making Visual Representation Metacognitive processes

Game show - choose a door 123

Which is a more likely cause of death in the USA: – Falling airplane parts – Shark attacks From Plous (question #7)‏

What alternative seems most likely to occur within the next ten years: – All-out nuclear war between the USA and Russia – All-out nuclear war between the USA and Russia in which neither country intends to use nuclear weapons, but both sides are drawn in by the actions of a third country such as Libya or Pakistan. From Plous (question #11)‏

What is heuristics? A short-cut to assess the likelihood of an event. (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974)‏ INTUITION EXPERIENCE

Meteorologisk institutt met.no Heuristics in Doswell (WF, dec 2004) ‏ Personal Analysis vs intuition Biases Contradictions

Meteorologisk institutt met.no Heuristics Two types considered: Representativeness –Weather pattern recognition Availability –Use our memory to assess likelihood of a particular event

Other heuristics Anchoring and adjustment Group decision Hindsight bias –”I knew it all along…”

Cognitive psychologists Pliske, Crandall and Klein: 5 levels of competence –novice –advanced beginner –competent –proficient –expert

What differences are there between experts and novices

Cognitive psychologists Pliske, Crandall and Klein (cont'd): Characteristics of the expert forecaster –Form a mental model prior to looking at NWP –Mental representation of underlying dynamics of the weather situation

Hahn, Rall and Klinger: What decisions stood out as expert decisions: – Identifying the Big One – Recognizing severity and issuing warnings – Explicit information to the public (wording) ‏ Cognitive psychologists

Hahn, Rall and Klinger (cont.): Recommendations –Technology must synchronize with the decision-making process of forecasters –Understand factors that make experts stand out and train others to this –Teamwork (colleagues as «sounding boards») ‏ Cognitive psychologists

Suggest and discuss training activities that promote expertise

Meteorologisk institutt met.no Thank you! ”There is no right way to make decisions” - Pliske et.al ”Decision making is heavily dependent on time and mood.” - Plous for-adults-our-top-50/

Meteorologisk institutt met.no Recommendations for training Social psychology research –Second guessing – what could go wrong? –Discuss with colleagues Difficult decisions –Ian Bell – Hand-out Eumetcal WS 2008 –Hahn et al - cognitive task analysis

Meteorologisk institutt met.no A word on feedback Vital to improve performance Project Phoenix is a good example on how this can be done operationally Environment: Opportunity to learn Self: Open to critics

Meteorologisk institutt met.no Project Phoenix SKILL Forecaster NWP Limit of predictability Better Data Understanding the Science Technology/Tools Techniques Decision Making TIME David Ball, MSC. Eumetcal NWP 2007

Meteorologisk institutt met.no Leonard Snellman, 1977

Meteorologisk institutt met.no Bulletin of the AMS (BAMS) ‏ BAMS, Dec 2007 BAMS, Nov 2006