When a major flood is imminent, the National Weather Service (NWS) issues a wide array of timely and accurate data to help communities understand potential impacts. But often communities still struggle to know how and when to prepare. Since 2012, Nurture Nature Center has conducted a series of social science research studies on the ways that residents and emergency managers in flood-prone communities throughout the Eastern United States use various flood forecast products issued by NWS, to help make recommendations for how they can be improved to become easier to understand and more likely to motivate people to take protective actions.

NNC’s Executive Director Rachel Hogan Carr will be presenting the findings of these studies in presentations this fall, including as part of a webinar hosted by the Monmouth Coast Institute at Monmouth University on Tuesday, August 15 at 11 p.m. (hyperlink: http://midatlanticocean.org/event/webinar-risk-communication-in-the-post-sandy-era/). She will also present the findings at the Association of State Floodplain Managers Flood Mitigation Workshop on August 17 at the National Mitigation and Floodproofing Workshop.

Through focus groups and surveys with residents and emergency managers in riverine and coastal communities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and West Virginia, NNC has developed a series of recommendations to improve how people understand and respond to these flood forecast products. Carr will present about the study’s methodology, and its key recommendations, through these and other upcoming presentations. Stay tuned for other upcoming opportunities to learn more about NNC’s research and recommendations.