{"title":"Lives Saved vs Time Lost: Direct Societal Benefits of Probabilistic Tornado Warnings","authors":"A. Ugarov","doi":"10.1175/wcas-d-22-0139.1","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\nNational Weather Service is planning to implement the system of probabilistic tornado warnings. In this paper, we estimate and compare full societal costs of tornadoes with existing deterministic and potential probabilistic warnings. These full costs include the value of statistical lives lost as well as the value of the time spent sheltering. We find that probabilistic tornado warnings would decrease total expected fatalities. The improvement in decision-making would also decrease the total opportunity cost of time spent sheltering even though the total sheltering time is likely to increase. In total, probabilistic warnings should lower societal costs of tornadoes relative to deterministic warnings by approximately $76-139 million per year with a large portion of this improvement coming from lower casualties.","PeriodicalId":48971,"journal":{"name":"Weather Climate and Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Weather Climate and Society","FirstCategoryId":"89","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1175/wcas-d-22-0139.1","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
National Weather Service is planning to implement the system of probabilistic tornado warnings. In this paper, we estimate and compare full societal costs of tornadoes with existing deterministic and potential probabilistic warnings. These full costs include the value of statistical lives lost as well as the value of the time spent sheltering. We find that probabilistic tornado warnings would decrease total expected fatalities. The improvement in decision-making would also decrease the total opportunity cost of time spent sheltering even though the total sheltering time is likely to increase. In total, probabilistic warnings should lower societal costs of tornadoes relative to deterministic warnings by approximately $76-139 million per year with a large portion of this improvement coming from lower casualties.
期刊介绍:
Weather, Climate, and Society (WCAS) publishes research that encompasses economics, policy analysis, political science, history, and institutional, social, and behavioral scholarship relating to weather and climate, including climate change. Contributions must include original social science research, evidence-based analysis, and relevance to the interactions of weather and climate with society.