Collaboratively identifying gaps and needs -  outcomes of the 1st WMO WWRP/SERA "Weather and Society" Conference

<p>One of the goals of both WMO and the German Hans Ertel Centre for Weather Research (HErZ) is to &#8220;spread the word&#8221; about the research on the use of weather and climate services for society, e.g. through training or conferences bringing together national weather services and the research and user communities.. WMO&#8217;s Societal and Economic Research Application Working Group and HErZ joined forces to invite the weather community to actively participate in the &#8220;1st Weather and Society Conference&#8221;. The focus of the Conference was the science for services approach adopted by the WMO to understand, analyse and enhance the value of weather and climate services in society.&#160;</p><p>The objectives of the conference were to:</p><ul><li>discuss and promote all aspects of social and economic research applications along the weather forecast value chain</li> <li>bring people together from the operational meteorological and hydrological services, research and forecast user communities</li> <li>identify gaps, needs and challenges to reducing the risks to citizens and society&#160;</li> </ul><p>&#160;</p><p>To allow a truly global participance, the conference was free of costs to the participants and organised to accommodate as many time zones as possible. Sessions in the first week were held from 0800 to 1100 UTC, while the sessions in the second week ran from 2000 to 2300 UTC. Each two-hour session was convened in WebEx, contained up to six oral presentations and started with a keynote talk that covered a general overview of the theme. GatherTown turned out to be a very useful platform for the following more interactive poster session or for further easy to arrange discussions.&#160; Overall, the conference comprised 157&#160; presentations and welcomed 749 registrations from 104 countries.&#160;</p><p>Each session was accompanied with an online survey on the gaps and needs on the topic of the session. One of the interesting results was the differences in motivations to join the f different sessions, measured in 5 dimensions of interests(guidance and methods, meeting experts in the field, challenges and opportunities, networking opportunities, academic knowledge). The selected topics of the conference reflected the weather information value chain (Citizen Science & Observations; &#160; Estimating and improving the socio-economic benefit of weather information;Understanding the communication of weather forecast uncertainty; The First Mile of Weather and Climate Information and Warning;Impact based forecasting and warnings of extreme weather events ; Indigenous and local weather knowledge;&#160; Value chain of Early Warning System; Use of weather information for civil protection, emergency management and humanitarian aid; The last mile challenges of seamless weather and climate information.&#160;</p><p>In the presentation we will highlight some of the gaps and needs identified in the presentations, the sessions surveys and from a post conference survey.</p>