Products and Applications
Shelby Weder, an economics researcher with the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBES) group at CIRA worked with a team of NOAA affiliated economists and NWS Southern Region staff and partners to develop several operational impact-estimate tools to be used by local WFO’s for port closures in the Southern Region. These tools focus on costs of port closures due to hurricanes for the Ports of Houston, New Orleans, and Tampa. The local WFOs use these tools to generate a report that estimates the impact of the port closure and the reduction of impact attributed to NWS impact-based decision support services (IDSS) which support managing vessel traffic, operation costs of vessel operators, the volume of cargo transiting the port, and the value of cargo transiting the port. We are further expanding the tools for other severe weather closures such as marine fog. Melissa Huffman, Meteorologist-in-Charge at the NWS Southern Region, will be presenting on their use of the tool at AMS 2026.
Download Weekly Report (PDF)Posted on: January 23, 2026
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