Is Our Weather Information Decision-Ready? Insights from Exploratory Demonstrations with Authorities and First Responders in Switzerland

Local communities and cantonal authorities in Switzerland play a central role in responding to severe weather events, requiring timely, reliable, and actionable information to support operational decision-making. In practice, stakeholders rely on a range of information sources, from widely used third-party weather applications and the official MeteoSwiss platform to the expert-oriented Swiss national platform for natural hazards (GIN). This diversity reflects differing user needs, levels of expertise, and varying degrees of trust in information characteristics such as update frequency, spatial resolution, and visualization. As a result, stakeholders routinely combine and cross-reference sources to build situational awareness and increase decision confidence. Within the Horizon Europe project GOBEYOND, we investigate how different user groups interact with weather information, how it influences decision-making, and where critical gaps may hinder effective response. Our work focuses on two pilot regions, the Canton of Ticino and the Canton of Zurich, and involves close collaboration with first responders, civil protection authorities, cantonal offices, and natural hazard experts. To support this work, we developed a flexible local demonstrator platform that serves as both a prototyping and engagement tool, providing customizable layers of existing weather information alongside new products, including probabilistic forecast visualizations and impact-based approaches integrating stakeholder-relevant exposure data.

Stakeholder workshops and demonstration rounds using the prototype platform allowed us to assess how different types of information contribute to making data decision-ready. Information needs are highly context-dependent, varying between real-time situational management and anticipatory planning. Users balance independent data interpretation with reliance on expert guidance, highlighting the continued importance of mediated communication formats such as forecaster briefings tailored to operational needs. In addition, the usefulness of weather information depends strongly on its integration into existing workflows and decision processes. Our findings show that effective decision support is not only a matter of providing more or higher-quality data, but of ensuring its interpretation, contextualization, and alignment with established practices. Accordingly, we prioritize integrating new products into existing dissemination channels, including remote forecaster briefings and the Swiss national platform for natural hazards (GIN), to ensure usability, trust, and operational acceptance. We also explore opportunities to integrate weather information into situation management and situational awareness platforms used by stakeholders, further enhancing its operational relevance and accessibility. The poster presents key findings from stakeholder interactions, highlighting differences in user profiles and decision-making needs, as well as an overview of feature categories across weather and impact-oriented information, including feedback on visualizations, probabilistic products, and impact-based approaches.