Weather, Climate and Public Policy
Societal impacts of weather, climate, and public policy
Climate variability and hazardous weather events (such as tornadoes, floods, severe storms, hurricanes and drought) present many unique challenges to modern societies. CRCM has several research programs that focus on the societal impacts of weather, climate, and public policy. Together these programs address how different actors and institutions in the policy process understand and behave under these changing conditions.
Applying social science to weather and climate related issues
The CRCR has developed substantial experience and capabilities for undertaking collaborative research projects, and brings this expertise to bear in developing long-term research initiatives to apply state-of-the-art social science to weather and climate related issues with researchers at OU's National Weather Center, Sandia National Laboratories and experts and researchers at many other Universities.
Understanding and managing weather related risks
Goals include providing usable knowledge concerning the manner in which weather forecasting organizations and individual forecasters can effectively manage the rapidly evolving radar technologies and transitions to new ways of understanding and managing weather related risks, and deepening practical understanding of how weather data can serve societal interests, including more effectively reducing property damage and saving lives.
Weather, climate and public policy projects
Examples of CRCR projects in the area of weather, climate and public policy include:
- Building upon existing research into the uses of new technology for severe storm prediction, using systematic observation systems, archival records of warning decisions, and debriefing interviews to understand the development and potential value of new forecasting technologies.
- Creating an integrated platform for tracking an array of attributes, behaviors, practices, and professional judgments of a stream of the leading professional weather forecasters in the US and globally.
- Integrating social/political/geographic information into large scale dataframes (such as the Oklahoma Mesonet), permitting real-time coupling of meteorological and social data streams.
- The Weather Sense project analyzes the changing manner in which US residents perceive and understand the changing weather around them. The project is intended to analyze perceptions of changes in medium-term (over the last 2-3 years) temperatures and incidence of flooding and drought. The project permits testing theories of why people see weather patterns in the way they do, and the construction of geographically based quantitative models of the processes that guide weather perceptions. Understanding weather perceptions is prerequisite to knowing what weather products can be provided to the public, and in what form, that will most improve adaptation and response to weather events.
Primary research &
analytical themes
Risk and Risk Perception in scientifically controversial or complex domains
Weather, Climate and Public Policy
Disaster and Crisis Management
Studying Risk,
Risk Perception,
& Crisis Management
An interdisciplinary research center
The CRCR is an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Oklahoma that studies risk, risk perception and crisis management in several substantive domains. The areas of research interest and expertise include energy and the environment, weather and climate, national security and terrorism, and the social dynamics surrounding complex controversial technologies.
New pathways for understanding
The CRCR seeks to develop new pathways for understanding and managing technological and environmental risks. The CRCM maintains an expanding network of affiliated researchers from other universities, national laboratories, and federal agencies to assist in both defining and utilizing new and unexpected opportunities for research and public policy analysis.