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- e . The Emergency Management Decision Support System. Matthew Kelsch" NOAAIFSL RIEIFSI 325 Broadway Boulder, CO 80303 kelsch@fsl.noaa.gov On 11 July 1990 a severe thunderstorm moved from the foothills of Larimer County, Colorado south-southeastward across the Front Range urban corridor from Boulder through metro Denver. The National Weather Service (NWS) forecast office in Denver, using the latest technology devel- oped at the NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL) in Boulder, issued timely warnings along the path of the storm. The use of modernized equipment at the NWS was a success for detecting, analyzing, and issuing warnings efficiently. However, the storm became the most damaging hail- storm in U.S. history. More the 40 injuries occurred at a Denver amusement park that had not been prepared for the hail accompanying the storm. From the perspective of local response to severe weather warning, this was not a success of the modernized NWS. FSL is one of the leading research institutions for developing and testing the tools, methodolo- gies, and theories to be used in the modernized NWS. By the early 1 990s many of the ideas and tools had been successfully implemented in the Denver NWS forecast office. Much of the mod- ernization focused on the tools of the NWS forecasters and how he/she can make more accurate, timely, and area-specific forecasts. Dissemination of those improved analyses and forecasts to the users in emergency management was a weak link in the process that needed attention. The Local Data Acquisition and Dissemination (LDAD) project has been developed to address this problem within the modernized NWS. The LDAD Emergency Management Decision Support (EMDS) system provides weather infor- mation to emergency management users in image, graphic, and text formats that can be embel- lished with audio alerts, animation, and interactive programs. The products are derived from those available from the modernized NWS. However, the products are presented in a form that accommodates the needs of the emergency management user who may not have meteorological training, but must make crucial decisions regarding weather dangers. The prototype systems were deployed at the Boulder County Emergency Operations Center in Boulder, the Urban Drainage and Flood Control District in Denver, and the Denver NWS forecast office. This setup permits FSL to evaluate both the technology and the product content that can best meet the goals for disseminating NWS information. Products include color images of stan- dard meteorological variables such as temperature and relative humidity, and derived products such as fire danger images. Graphic overlays include wind, precipitation type, and cloud cover among others. These are generally updated hourly using local analysis packages such as the Local Analysis and Prediction System (LAPS). Other variables are available in higher resolution every 5 minutes, such as color images of radar reflectivity and radar-derived rainfall, along with "jointly affiliated with the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, Colorado State University, Fort Col- Iins,CO.