The future is now: the need for operational multi-hazard multi-impact collaborative quantitative impact forecasting

In a changing climate, we see an increase in weather-related impact on society for a range of different types of impact. Moreover, it was hypothesized by First Responders that we would not only see an increase in risk, but also an increase in risk correlation. When risk correlation increases, we see an increasing number of days per year on which different types of impact show peak risk on the same day.

In the collaboration between First Responders and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) we use quantitative AI/ML methods to build a model of the statistical relationship between weather data and three types of impact data in The Netherlands. However, this is not simply another success story of AI/ML. Rather, we see that the essential aspect is the collaboration between First Responders and the meteorological institute. Impact forecasting is not just about combining data. It is about building trust and communication between specialists, in this particular case as a co-design process between researchers, developers and field-experts.

The three types of impact we have considered are: (i) number of wildfire calls that the Fire Service responds to; (ii) number of Police priority dispatches (i.e. when a patrol car turns on the blue lights); and (iii) response time of Police priority dispatches. These numbers are aggregated over the Netherlands. We have then projected this model on the weather of the past, as well as on four different future climate scenarios. The results show a quite consistent increase in risk and in risk correlation. This implies that we will not only see higher demand for first response services, but are also moving more and more into multi-impact situations, which put higher demands on communication and coordination within and between different branches of first response service providers.

Working on wildfires has been a true and inspiring catalyst for this approach, and is therefore our main focus of this presentation. However, this topic does not live in a vacuum, and we will highlight how wildfire risk is increasingly correlated with other types of impact. The risk correlation hypothesis, as well as its confirmation, provides the rationale for a shift in how we approach collaborative quantitative impact forecasting. We see an immediate need for a shift from a single-hazard single-impact approach to a multi-hazard multi-impact approach.

In addition, given the ‘duty of care’ that the Netherlands Met Office has, we feel the ethical and institutional obligation to not only do impact forecasting research, but also to take this research into operation. As this is an ongoing process, a demonstration of the most current minimum viable product (MVP) will be part of the presentation.