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, 60378-60379 [2022-21582]

Agencies

• DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

[Federal Register Volume 87, Number 192 (Wednesday, October 5, 2022)]
[Notices]
[Pages 60378-60379]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2022-21582]


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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

    The Department of Commerce will submit the following information 
collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for 
review and clearance in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 
1995, on or after the date of publication of this notice. We invite 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. Public comments were previously requested via the 
Federal Register on 06/17/2022 (87 FR 36465) during a 60-day comment 
period. This notice allows for an additional 30 days for public 
comments.
    Agency: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Commerce.
    Title: Developing, Testing, and Evaluating Methods for 
Transitioning the Brief Vulnerability Overview Tool (BVOT) to NWS 
Weather Forecasting Office Operations.
    OMB Control Number: 0648-XXXX.
    Form Number(s): None.

[[Page 60379]]

    Type of Request: Regular (New information collection).
    Number of Respondents: 140.
    Average Hours per Response: Vulnerability Mapping: 1 hour; 
Background Interview: 1.5 hours (only being conducted with a sample of 
EMs, ~100); Trust Survey: 0.25 hours (once at the start of the study 
and one at the end of the study).
    Total Annual Burden Hours: 120 hours.
    Needs and Uses: 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 WFO meteorologists and their CWA-based core 
partners (especially, their county-based emergency managers (EMs). 
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 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 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; Public Law 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 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.
    Affected Public: State, Local, or Tribal government.
    Frequency: Once or twice during the study.
    Respondent's Obligation: Voluntary.
    Legal Authority: 15 U.S.C. Ch. 111, Weather Research and 
Forecasting Information.
    This information collection request may be viewed at 
www.reginfo.gov. Follow the instructions to view the Department of 
Commerce collections currently under review by OMB.
    Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information 
collection should be submitted within 30 days of the publication of 
this notice on the following website www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain. 
Find this particular information collection by selecting ``Currently 
under 30-day Review--Open for Public Comments'' or by using the search 
function and entering the title of the collection.

Sheleen Dumas,
Department PRA Clearance Officer, Office of the Chief Information 
Officer, Commerce Department.
[FR Doc. 2022-21582 Filed 10-4-22; 8:45 am]
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