[Federal Register Volume 87, Number 54 (Monday, March 21, 2022)]
[Notices]
[Pages 15920-15921]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2022-05943]


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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; Weather and Society Survey and Using Quick Response Surveys To 
Build a Public Perception and Response Database

    The Department of Commerce will submit the following information 
collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for 
review and clearance in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 
1995, on or after the date of publication of this notice. We invite 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. Public comments were previously requested via the 
Federal Register on 9/22/2021 during a 60-day comment period. This 
notice allows for an additional 30 days for public comments.
    Agency: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Commerce.
    Title: Weather and Society Survey and Using Quick Response Surveys 
to Build a Public Perception and Response Database.
    OMB Control Number: 0648-XXXX.
    Form Number(s): None.
    Type of Request: Regular (New information collection).
    Number of Respondents: 37,650.
    Average Hours per Response: Longitudinal surveys: .20 minutes; QRS: 
10 minutes.
    Total Annual Burden Hours: 7,140.
    Needs and Uses: In alignment with the Weather Forecasting and 
Innovation Act of 2017 (Pub. L. 115-25), two data collections are 
proposed under this request. There are no other collections for which 
these can be merged.
    The first proposed information collection request 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 articulate and explicate how individuals 
receive, interpret, and respond to NOAA information, forecasts, and 
warnings for severe, winter, and tropical weather hazards. Furthermore, 
NOAA lacks this type of data longitudinally (i.e., collected over 
time). Without this type of longitudinal data, NOAA, and the NWS 
specifically, cannot determine if it has met its mission of saving 
lives and property, propose societal impact performance metrics, nor 
demonstrate if progress or improvements have been made, as outlined in 
the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017. 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). The Weather 
and Society Survey also advances the findings of the National Academy 
of Science 2012 report, ``Assessment of the NWS Modernization 
Program'', in reference to NWS' ``chain of events associated with a 
tornado warning'' (p52). 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). Furthermore,

[[Page 15921]]

the Survey furthers 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.
    This information would be collected at the Cooperative Institute 
for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS) and the University of 
Oklahoma's Center for Risk and Crisis Management (CRCM), who has 
developed data collection instruments that would allow for more routine 
and longitudinal data collection, as the data will be collected on an 
annual basis. Furthermore, this team has developed interactive 
``dashboards'', or tools, to visualize the aggregated data.
    Respondents include adults (age 18+) who reside in the United 
States, recruited by survey companies that maintain large panels of 
people who sign up to complete internet surveys, such as Qualtrics and 
Survey Sampling International. Respondents will be asked questions 
about the ways they have received, interpreted, and responded to NWS 
information, forecasts, and warnings for severe, tropical, and winter 
weather hazards. Questions about preparedness for specific hazards such 
as heat waves, tornadoes, and drought may also be included. This data 
collection serves many purposes, including gaining a better 
understanding of how key factors within a given population, or 
organization, vary over time, location, and across different groups; 
the ability to detect gradual trends or abrupt changes in those factors 
over time or in response to particular events; and the potential to 
explore possible correlations and causal relationships with other 
observed variables of interest. These data will be used by the OSTI in 
NWS to develop a baseline and performance metrics to improve the 
information and services it provides and to help members of the weather 
enterprise answer basic questions about the people in the communities 
they serve, which is a necessary step towards customizing and improving 
risk communication, education, and decision support to meet the 
characteristics of the community, including those in vulnerable 
populations. The information collected will help identify differences 
and best practices between communities and assist NWS in developing new 
education and risk communication strategies. The survey data and its 
associated dashboard will serve as interactive tools to allow NWS 
forecasters, partners, and policymakers to access and explore data for 
training and performance evaluation purposes.
    The second proposed collection is sponsored through NOAA's FY2021 
Weather Program Office's Social Science Program, and addresses the 
Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBES) component of meeting 
NOAA's Research and Development (R&D) Vision Areas (2020-2026) to 
integrate SBES into products, tools, and services that improve weather 
and air quality forecasting and societal outcomes.
    This proposal aims to create an online survey system for collecting 
data on the publics' perception and response to four different hazards: 
Tornados, thunderstorm winds over 70 miles per hour (mph), flash 
floods, and winter weather. The online surveys will be the building 
blocks for a multi-year, cross-sectional database on human perception 
and response. The survey system will enable individual National Weather 
Service Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) to disseminate Quick Response 
Surveys (QRS) soon after a hazardous event occurs to collect perishable 
data on the publics' perceptions and response. Select WFOs will 
distribute the QRSs using web links on NWS social media and core 
partners' social media or email lists. Surveys will ask the public 
questions on timing, location, weather information sources, motivations 
and influences for taking protective action to gain insights into how 
NWS warning communications interact with these factors to result in 
protective action behaviors.
    Affected Public: Individuals or households.
    Frequency: Once.
    Respondent's Obligation: Voluntary.
    Legal Authority: 15 U.S.C. Ch. 111, Weather Research and 
Forecasting Information.
    This information collection request may be viewed at 
www.reginfo.gov. Follow the instructions to view the Department of 
Commerce collections currently under review by OMB.
    Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information 
collection should be submitted within 30 days of the publication of 
this notice on the following website www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain. 
Find this particular information collection by selecting ``Currently 
under 30-day Review--Open for Public Comments'' or by using the search 
function and entering the title of the collection.

Sheleen Dumas,
Department PRA Clearance Officer, Office of the Chief Information 
Officer, Commerce Department.
[FR Doc. 2022-05943 Filed 3-18-22; 8:45 am]
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