Decision Modeling for Smart Climatology

Abstract

The purpose of smart climatology is to provide information that would be useful in operational planning at lead times of two to four weeks or greater. Decisions made at shorter lead-times are generally informed by forecasts. One of the challenges in designing a new climatology data system -- to include generation, storage, and access -- is anticipating how the data might be used, and therefore how to design the system to provide the most useful data in their most useful format. This report uses an operations research/decision analysis (OR/DA) approach to prototype the process of using smart climatology data in planning, and identifies challenges and key features of a decision-relevant climatology data system. While some commercial forecast and climatology providers, such as The Weather Channel, profit from the entertainment value of forecasts, military meteorology and oceanography (METOC) products create value by influencing operational consequences. Taking this perspective, an OR/DA framework can be used to analyze and improve the following: (1) how METOC information is used in decision-making (mission planning and execution); (2) the design of METOC products for communication to operational decision makers; and (3) the operational value created by METOC information. The OR/DA framework makes some basic assumptions that may be non-intuitive to the METOC community. First, information can only improve operational consequences if it affects decisions. There is no qualitative difference between METOC forecasts and climatology. In OR/DA analysis, all forecasts are treated as probabilistic. Operational consequences are produced by the interaction of commanders' decisions with METOC events. Therefore, OR/DA analyses are meaningful within a given decision context, or scenario. Decision policies, product design, and information value are best analyzed in expectation.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 30, 2008
Accession Number
ADA497080

Entities

People

  • Eva Regnier

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Climatology
  • Demographic Cohorts
  • Information Systems
  • Landing Craft
  • Lead Time
  • Meteorology
  • Military Research
  • Models
  • Naval Mines
  • Operations Research
  • Probability
  • Probability Distributions
  • Random Variables
  • Training
  • Tropical Cyclones
  • Warfare

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Materials Science.
  • Polar and Arctic Studies
  • Systems Analysis and Design