Understanding the Value of NOAA Mission through Public Awareness and Engagement

The weather enterprise produces a large number of products and services the value of which cannot be fully realized without increased public awareness and engagement. This SBIR subtopic seeks the development of novel outreach tools and technologies to increase public awareness of the broad mission areas of weather support in a weather ready nation. It also seeks to stimulate engagement by quantifying and communicating the benefits of the many weather products and services, and helping to transition them to the other sectors of the economy. Activities under this SBIR subtopic might include: demonstrating methods communicate economic benefits of weather products and services across various sectors and over time, expanding social science efforts to better communicate the importance of weather forecasting and climate prediction services, developing outreach tools and technologies to educate and engage the public to increase awareness, understanding, and value of the oceans, and improving the utilization of the government-provided real-time space weather and model output data to encourage private-sector development of value-added products and services that address specific needs of the electric power industry.