| Location: | Costa Rica |
|---|---|
| Authors: | Rebeca Morera Rodríguez (IMN), Eladio Solano León (IMN), Juan Diego Naranjo Díaz (IMN), José Alberto Navarro Pérez (IMN), Rochelle Campbell (HRC), Celina Kattan (Senior Consultant), Daniel Beardsley (US-NWS) |
| Publication/Conference: | American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting 2022, Oral Presentation |
Over the past four years, the National Meteorological Institute (Instituto Meteorológico Nacional, IMN) has increased its focus on providing impact based forecasts (IBF) to improve decision-making services to the Comisión Nacional de Emergencias (CNE) and other core partners to help them understand the forecasts and take appropriate actions in the face of upcoming severe weather events. The Weather-Ready Nations program began with the support of the U.S. National Weather Service-International Activities Office and the U.S. Agency for International Development/Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. IMN recognizes the role of IBF as a primary service and is working to fully and more effectively provide it to federal, provincial, and canton (local) decision-makers. To do so, it is essential that IMN understands how users are benefiting from existing IBF, even as they look to improve it. We aim to describe the IBF products and services available during each stage of the emergency-management cycle: preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery. To demonstrate the role of IBF for the emergency management community, the authors use a case study analysis to compare two Hurricanes in Costa Rica with similar characteristics but differing in their implementation of IBF: the October 2018 hurricane Michael (no formal IDSS) and the November 2020 hurricane ETA/IOTA (formal IDSS). In comparing the hurricanes case studies, the authors find that formal IBF provides CNE and other core partners with accurate, actionable, and consistent weather information and support that allows them to respond to winter storms to reduce impacts on lives and livelihoods.