Notice2022-13112
Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for Review and Approval; Comment Request; Developing, Testing, and Evaluating Methods for Transitioning the Brief Vulnerability Overview Tool (BVOT) to NWS Weather Forecasting Office Operations
Primary source
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Published
June 17, 2022
Issuing agencies
Commerce DepartmentNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Abstract
The Department of Commerce, in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), invites the general public and other Federal agencies to comment on proposed, and continuing information collections, which helps us assess the impact of our information collection requirements and minimize the public's reporting burden. The purpose of this notice is to allow for 60 days of public comment preceding submission of the collection to OMB.
Full Text
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[Federal Register Volume 87, Number 117 (Friday, June 17, 2022)]
[Notices]
[Pages 36465-36467]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [<a href="http://www.gpo.gov">www.gpo.gov</a>]
[FR Doc No: 2022-13112]
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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for Review and Approval; Comment
Request; Developing, Testing, and Evaluating Methods for Transitioning
the Brief Vulnerability Overview Tool (BVOT) to NWS Weather Forecasting
Office Operations
AGENCY: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce.
ACTION: Notice of information collection, request for comment.
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SUMMARY: The Department of Commerce, in accordance with the Paperwork
Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), invites the general public and other
Federal agencies to comment on proposed, and continuing information
collections, which helps us assess the impact of our information
collection requirements and minimize the public's reporting burden. The
purpose of this notice is to allow for 60 days of public comment
preceding submission of the collection to OMB.
DATES: To ensure consideration, comments regarding this proposed
information collection must be received on or before August 16, 2022.
ADDRESSES: Interested persons are invited to submit written comments to
Adrienne Thomas, NOAA PRA Officer, at <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#551431273c303b3b307b213d3a383426153b3a34347b323a23"><span class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="68290c1a010d06060d461c000705091b2806070909460f071e">[email protected]</span></a>. Please
reference OMB Control Number 0648-XXXX in the subject line of your
comments. Do not submit Confidential Business Information or otherwise
sensitive or protected information.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Requests for additional information or
specific questions related to collection activities should be directed
to Nicole Kurkowski, R2O Team Lead, DOC/NOAA/NWS/OSTI, 1325 East-West
Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910, 301-427-9104,
<a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#2c42454f4340490247595e47435b5f47456c42434d4d024b435a"><span class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="5937303a36353c77322c2b32362e2a32301937363838773e362f">[email protected]</span></a>.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Abstract
This is a request for a new collection of information. The data
collection is sponsored by DOC/NOAA/National Weather Service (NWS)/
Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI). Currently, NOAA
lacks data and data collection instruments that can capture local,
knowledge-based, weather-hazard vulnerability information from NWS
Weather Forecasting Office (WFO) meteorologists and their County
Warning Area (CWA)-based core partners (especially, their county-based
emergency managers (EMs). The CWA boundaries are the counties/zones for
which each WFO is responsible for issuing forecasts and warnings.
Without this vulnerability information, WFO-level meteorologists'
situational awareness of the greatest concerns of and risks to local
communities often suffer. In addition, during situations where a WFO
must rely on a back-up office due to a WFO being affected by severe
weather conditions (e.g., having to shelter, losing power due to the
impacts of a hurricane, tornado outbreak, etc.), back-up WFOs rarely
have the situational awareness of the critical areas of concern to
local core partners and, thus, are less able to communicate mission
critical messaging to those core partners. Without this type
[[Page 36466]]
of local vulnerability information, NOAA, and the NWS specifically, is
limited in its ability to meet its mission of saving lives and property
as outlined in the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of
2017 (especially Pub. L. 115-25 Sec. 405.d.1.A, 405.d.1.B, Sec
406.c.2.B). This effort aims to advance the Tornado Warning Improvement
and Extension Program (TWIEP)'s goal to ``reduce the loss of life and
economic losses from tornadoes through the development and extension of
accurate, effective, and timely tornado forecasts, predictions, and
warnings, including the prediction of tornadoes beyond one hour in
advance (Pub. L. 115-25)''. This work addresses NOAA's 5-year Research
and Development Vision Areas (2020-2026) Section 1.4 (FACETs). This
effort also advances the NWS Strategic Plan (2019-2022)
``Transformative Impact-Based Decision Support Services (IDSS) and
Research to Operations and Operations to Research (R2O/O2R). The Brief
Vulnerability Overview Tool (BVOT) would contribute to the NWS Weather
Ready Nation (WRN) Roadmap (2013) Sections 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3, 1.1.8,
and 3.1.4. In addition, because the BVOT is ``hazard agnostic''--it is
used to collect vulnerabilities based on different weather hazards and
can be organized to display those vulnerabilities only related to those
specific hazards that are relevant to an NWS WFO at any given moment--
it can be seen to help advance a number of hazard-specific
congressional laws including (but, not limited to) those related to
tsunamis (Pub. L. 109-424 Sec. 5.b.4, 5.c.2, 5.c.3, Sec. 6; Pub. L.
115-25 Sec. 505.c.5.B and Sec. 505.d.1) and the recently introduced
TORNADO Act (S.3817 Sec. 3.b.6.C).
This study will assess the feasibility of NWS WFOs working with
their local core partners to collect local known vulnerability points
associated with specific types of weather hazards in order to populate
a simple (but agile) GIS shapefile that can be used to provide WFO-
level meteorologists with situational awareness of the vulnerabilities
of greatest concern in their CWAs. This vulnerability awareness tool--
the Brief Vulnerability Overview Tool (BVOT)--has been designed by
researchers at the University of Oklahoma's Center for Applied Social
Research (CASR) and Center for the Analysis and Prediction of Storms
(CAPS), and it would permit NWS WFOs to work closely with their core
partners to collect initial vulnerability points and to update those
points in a efficient manner that would require little training and
little effort through the use of widely available, simple online data
collection methods.
Research participants will include adult (age 18+) NWS WFO
meteorologists and their core partners (primarily the county emergency
managers (EMs)) from four WFOs around the country. Participants will be
asked to participate in a number of background interviews. In addition,
they will be asked to complete an online (Qualtrics) survey assessing
the attachment, trust, and knowledge of WFO meteorologists and their
core partners. This survey will be conducted pre-/post-study in order
to identify changes over time. Participants will also be asked to
contribute to and learn how to maintain and use a Brief Vulnerability
Overview Tool (BVOT)--a GIS shapefile-based way of collecting and
displaying local, known vulnerability points within the existing
operational environment of NWS WFOs.
The creation of a BVOT provides a number of benefits over and above
current efforts within the NWS. These include (1) improved situational
awareness for NWS WFO meteorologists; (2) improved spatial awareness of
vulnerabilities of greatest concerns to core partners can prompt and
fine-tune messaging and Decision Support Services (DSS) provided to
these core partners; (3) improved spatial situational awareness for
backup offices if an NWS WFO loses its capacity to operate; (4)
improved training and orientation for meteorologists who are new to an
NWS WFO; (5) providing a structured requirement for maintaining an
evolving, ``living'' database of vulnerabilities that can be shared and
equally accessed across the WFO and the NWS; and (6) providing
opportunities to improve the trust, communication, and rapport between
an NWS WFO and its core partners through the collaborative construction
and periodic updating of the BVOT.
II. Method of Collection
Recruitment & Training: Having worked extensively with NWS WFOs and
their partner Emergency Managers and core partners in both the Central
and Southern regions, the Principle Investors are familiar with what
will be necessary to receive permission to conduct the research
efficiently and in a manner that respects and minimizes the necessary
effort that will be requested from EMs and core partners (i.e., the
non-federal/federally-contracted participants in this study). After
recruitment of NWS WFO meteorologists into the study, we will contact
their partner EMs and core partners (generally, this is limited to
county EMs, but could include a few municipal or, if relevant, tribal
EM partners) to (1) describe the project to them, (2) seek informed
consent from them to participate in the study, (3) request that all
consented study participants complete the online, pre-/post-NWS-Core
Partner Trust survey and background interviews, (4) provide training/
orientation modules to all study participants on how to select and map
vulnerability data for the BVOT, and (5) develop a timeline for
completing the gathering of vulnerability data.
Data Gathering Methods
Background interviews will be conducted virtually using a video
conferencing platform (either Zoom or Google Meet). These will be
audio-recorded only and will focus on professional background and
perceptions of critical decision-making practices related to hazardous
weather information and understandings of local vulnerabilities. We
expect to only conduct background interviews with a sample of the EMs
who are participating in the study.
Trust and Relationship surveys will be administered through an
online, Qualtrics survey platform and will be administered at the start
of the study and at the end of the study to assess the impact of NWS
meteorologists and EMs working together on vulnerability mapping.
An Online Focus Group will be conducted after the BVOT has been
built to get feedback about how both NWS meteorologists and EMs
perceive the process of building the BVOT, how it could and should be
used in the future, and what has been helpful about the BVOT.
Vulnerability Mapping itself will involve using Google Earth Pro or
ArcGIS Online to map local, known, discrete, weather hazard-related
vulnerabilities in one's area of responsibility (for the EMs, this is
usually at the county level). EM participants are encouraged to limit
their time doing this mapping to no more than about 60 minutes in order
to ensure that they only focus on those vulnerabilities of greatest
concern.
III. Data
OMB Control Number: 0648-XXXX.
Form Number(s): None.
Type of Review: Regular (New information collection).
Affected Public: State, Local, or Tribal Government (Emergency
Managers).
Estimated Number of Respondents: ~140.
[[Page 36467]]
Estimated Time per Response: Online Focus Group and Vulnerability
Mapping: 1 hour each; Background Interview: 1.5 hours; Trust Surveys:
15 minutes each.
Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours: 425.
Estimated Total Annual Cost to Public: None.
Respondent's Obligation: Voluntary.
Legal Authority: 15 U.S.C. Ch. 111, Weather Research and
Forecasting Information.
IV. Request for Comments
We are soliciting public comments to permit the Department/Bureau
to: (a) Evaluate whether the proposed information collection is
necessary for the proper functions of the Department, including whether
the information will have practical utility; (b) Evaluate the accuracy
of our estimate of the time and cost burden for this proposed
collection, including the validity of the methodology and assumptions
used; (c) Evaluate ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of
the information to be collected; and (d) Minimize the reporting burden
on those who are to respond, including the use of automated collection
techniques or other forms of information technology.
Comments that you submit in response to this notice are a matter of
public record. We will include or summarize each comment in our request
to OMB to approve this ICR. Before including your address, phone
number, email address, or other personal identifying information in
your comment, you should be aware that your entire comment--including
your personal identifying information--may be made publicly available
at any time. While you may ask us in your comment to withhold your
personal identifying information from public review, we cannot
guarantee that we will be able to do so.
Sheleen Dumas,
Department PRA Clearance Officer, Office of the Chief Information
Officer, Commerce Department.
[FR Doc. 2022-13112 Filed 6-16-22; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-KE-P
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