[Federal Register Volume 87, Number 117 (Friday, June 17, 2022)]
[Notices]
[Pages 36465-36467]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2022-13112]


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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

AGENCY: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce.

ACTION: Notice of information collection, request for comment.

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SUMMARY: The Department of Commerce, in accordance with the Paperwork 
Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), invites 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. The 
purpose of this notice is to allow for 60 days of public comment 
preceding submission of the collection to OMB.

DATES: To ensure consideration, comments regarding this proposed 
information collection must be received on or before August 16, 2022.

ADDRESSES: Interested persons are invited to submit written comments to 
Adrienne Thomas, NOAA PRA Officer, at [email protected]. Please 
reference OMB Control Number 0648-XXXX in the subject line of your 
comments. Do not submit Confidential Business Information or otherwise 
sensitive or protected information.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Requests for additional information or 
specific questions related to collection activities should be directed 
to Nicole Kurkowski, R2O Team Lead, DOC/NOAA/NWS/OSTI, 1325 East-West 
Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910, 301-427-9104, 
[email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

I. Abstract

    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 
Weather Forecasting Office (WFO) meteorologists and their County 
Warning Area (CWA)-based core partners (especially, their county-based 
emergency managers (EMs). The CWA boundaries are the counties/zones for 
which each WFO is responsible for issuing forecasts and warnings. 
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

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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 Brief 
Vulnerability Overview Tool (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; Pub. L. 
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 Decision Support Services (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.

II. Method of Collection

    Recruitment & Training: Having worked extensively with NWS WFOs and 
their partner Emergency Managers and core partners in both the Central 
and Southern regions, the Principle Investors are familiar with what 
will be necessary to receive permission to conduct the research 
efficiently and in a manner that respects and minimizes the necessary 
effort that will be requested from EMs and core partners (i.e., the 
non-federal/federally-contracted participants in this study). After 
recruitment of NWS WFO meteorologists into the study, we will contact 
their partner EMs and core partners (generally, this is limited to 
county EMs, but could include a few municipal or, if relevant, tribal 
EM partners) to (1) describe the project to them, (2) seek informed 
consent from them to participate in the study, (3) request that all 
consented study participants complete the online, pre-/post-NWS-Core 
Partner Trust survey and background interviews, (4) provide training/
orientation modules to all study participants on how to select and map 
vulnerability data for the BVOT, and (5) develop a timeline for 
completing the gathering of vulnerability data.

Data Gathering Methods

    Background interviews will be conducted virtually using a video 
conferencing platform (either Zoom or Google Meet). These will be 
audio-recorded only and will focus on professional background and 
perceptions of critical decision-making practices related to hazardous 
weather information and understandings of local vulnerabilities. We 
expect to only conduct background interviews with a sample of the EMs 
who are participating in the study.
    Trust and Relationship surveys will be administered through an 
online, Qualtrics survey platform and will be administered at the start 
of the study and at the end of the study to assess the impact of NWS 
meteorologists and EMs working together on vulnerability mapping.
    An Online Focus Group will be conducted after the BVOT has been 
built to get feedback about how both NWS meteorologists and EMs 
perceive the process of building the BVOT, how it could and should be 
used in the future, and what has been helpful about the BVOT.
    Vulnerability Mapping itself will involve using Google Earth Pro or 
ArcGIS Online to map local, known, discrete, weather hazard-related 
vulnerabilities in one's area of responsibility (for the EMs, this is 
usually at the county level). EM participants are encouraged to limit 
their time doing this mapping to no more than about 60 minutes in order 
to ensure that they only focus on those vulnerabilities of greatest 
concern.

III. Data

    OMB Control Number: 0648-XXXX.
    Form Number(s): None.
    Type of Review: Regular (New information collection).
    Affected Public: State, Local, or Tribal Government (Emergency 
Managers).
    Estimated Number of Respondents: ~140.

[[Page 36467]]

    Estimated Time per Response: Online Focus Group and Vulnerability 
Mapping: 1 hour each; Background Interview: 1.5 hours; Trust Surveys: 
15 minutes each.
    Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours: 425.
    Estimated Total Annual Cost to Public: None.
    Respondent's Obligation: Voluntary.
    Legal Authority: 15 U.S.C. Ch. 111, Weather Research and 
Forecasting Information.

IV. Request for Comments

    We are soliciting public comments to permit the Department/Bureau 
to: (a) Evaluate whether the proposed information collection is 
necessary for the proper functions of the Department, including whether 
the information will have practical utility; (b) Evaluate the accuracy 
of our estimate of the time and cost burden for this proposed 
collection, including the validity of the methodology and assumptions 
used; (c) Evaluate ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of 
the information to be collected; and (d) Minimize the reporting burden 
on those who are to respond, including the use of automated collection 
techniques or other forms of information technology.
    Comments that you submit in response to this notice are a matter of 
public record. We will include or summarize each comment in our request 
to OMB to approve this ICR. Before including your address, phone 
number, email address, or other personal identifying information in 
your comment, you should be aware that your entire comment--including 
your personal identifying information--may be made publicly available 
at any time. While you may ask us in your comment to withhold your 
personal identifying information from public review, we cannot 
guarantee that we will be able to do so.

Sheleen Dumas,
Department PRA Clearance Officer, Office of the Chief Information 
Officer, Commerce Department.
[FR Doc. 2022-13112 Filed 6-16-22; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-KE-P