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On the use of Bayesian decision theory for issuing natural hazard warnings
Warnings for natural hazards improve societal resilience and are a good example of decision-making under uncertainty. A warning system is only useful if well defined and thus understood by stakeholders. However, most operational warning systems are heuristic: not formally or transparently defined. B...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5095440/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27843399 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2016.0295 |
Sumario: | Warnings for natural hazards improve societal resilience and are a good example of decision-making under uncertainty. A warning system is only useful if well defined and thus understood by stakeholders. However, most operational warning systems are heuristic: not formally or transparently defined. Bayesian decision theory provides a framework for issuing warnings under uncertainty but has not been fully exploited. Here, a decision theoretic framework is proposed for hazard warnings. The framework allows any number of warning levels and future states of nature, and a mathematical model for constructing the necessary loss functions for both generic and specific end-users is described. The approach is illustrated using one-day ahead warnings of daily severe precipitation over the UK, and compared to the current decision tool used by the UK Met Office. A probability model is proposed to predict precipitation, given ensemble forecast information, and loss functions are constructed for two generic stakeholders: an end-user and a forecaster. Results show that the Met Office tool issues fewer high-level warnings compared with our system for the generic end-user, suggesting the former may not be suitable for risk averse end-users. In addition, raw ensemble forecasts are shown to be unreliable and result in higher losses from warnings. |
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