Improving the Usability of Great Lakes Ice Forecasts through Knowledge Co-production

Funded by: NOAA Climate Program Office 

Journal publication is found here. 

Project Summary

In the Great Lakes, ice cover is integral to human activities in coastal communities and the region overall – from obstructing vessel navigation in the transportation sector to providing an opportunity for winter recreation. Rapid formation of lake ice poses significant challenges in commercial shipping and ice breaking operations. Timely, accurate, and usable ice information (i.e., current conditions and forecasting) has great potential to reduce safety risks for mariners and their vessels, among other stakeholders. A one-year Catalyst grant from the University of Michigan Graham Sustainability Institute funded the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR), the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL), and GLISA to improve the usability of NOAA’s Great Lakes Operational Forecast System (GLOFS) by engaging with stakeholders in a workshop hosted in partnership with U.S. Coast Guard and Lake Carriers Association (LCA) in July 2019. Pre-workshop surveys were also conducted with the 9th District U.S. Coast Guard and the Lake Carriers Association. The workshop allowed scientists and decision-makers to jointly identify barriers, opportunities, and recommendations to improve GLOFS usability. In October 2019, this project was scaled up to conduct further in-depth stakeholder engagements with the goal of developing formal recommendations to NOAA on future updates to the models, and the eventual development of a front-end user interface. In this project, GLISA, CIGLR, and GLERL are conducting in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with a broad range of user groups including the US and Canadian Coast Guards, US Army Corps of Engineers, and representatives of the shipping industry.