Research Summaries

Back Hurricane Decision Simulator

Fiscal Year 2018
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Regnier, Eva D.
Hernandez, Alejandro D.S.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary Marine installations on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the US face a challenging decision environment when hurricanes threaten. Commanders, often with a limited experience with hurricanes, must make high-stakes decisions regarding preparation and evacuation. Critical impacts are determined by combination of at least three separately forecast variables, each with considerable uncertainty and forecasts change at least every six hours.
NPS designed and built a hurricane decision simulator (HDS) for the Marine Corps Forces Reserve (MFR) to give users experience with this challenging decision context. The HDS provides the opportunity to practice the hurricane-preparation decisions in a context with realistic simulated storms and forecasts and rich detail about the commands’ plans for executing the key decisions. Expertise is highly task-specific, and the performance benefit associated with expertise is smaller in less realistic environments (Ward 2006). The HDS allows a user to gain a year’s worth of simulated experience in less than 15 minutes.
In FY16, the HDS reflected the headquarters location in New Orleans, and in FY17, a scenario for the Marine Reserve Training Center in Hialeah, FL, in addition to other improvements.
In FY18, we will shrink-wrap and deliver the HDS including the capability to create scenarios for new locations, including command-specific decisions, follow-on actions, local agency actions, and consequences as a function of storms and decisions, and storms that are a risk to a new Gulf or Atlantic coastal locations in the US. In addition, we will study the effect of the simulator on users’ risk judgments and decisions.
Ward, P., A. M. Williams, and P. A. Hancock (2006). Simulation for performance and training, Chapter 14, pp. 243–262. In K. A. Ericsson and Feltovich K. A. Ericsson and Feltovich (2006).
Keywords
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal