1. Will we be Gourmets or Gluttons?
All You Can Eat Data
Will we be Gourmets or Gluttons?

2. Essential Element of the Forecast System

3. All You Can Eat Data Concept from the Smartphone Industry

4. All You Can Eat Data Concept from the Smartphone Industry
But terms and conditions usually apply…

5. All You Can Eat Data Concept from the Smartphone Industry
But terms and conditions usually apply…

6. All You Can Eat Data
…but why would you want more of something than you actually need???

7. All you an eat..

8. All you an eat.. Maybe 60 to 70 individual items to choose from.
How many did you pick?
Probably no more than 6 to 8
The chef did not know in advance just what you wanted..

9. All you an analyse..

10. All you an analyse.. Perhaps 300 weather observations
Each containing individual elements of information
Perhaps 5,000 individual information elements
Maybe tell us something new!

11. All you an analyse..
Weather Charts tell us something about the power of presentation in organising data to promote good decision-making.
Use of weather data in analysis also tells us something about the strengths and weaknesses of human and machine analysis

12. The Explosion of Data Weather Data Minute-by-minute observations
Multi-channel satellite imagery (and many combinations thereof..)
Radar, Lidar, and other remote sensing

13. The Explosion of Data Impact Data Damage Reports Traffic Flows
Power Disruption
Flood extent and depth
Airport Delays

14. The Explosion of Data Impact Data
Text Reports
Images
Videos
Increasingly, a lot of this “soft” data is on social media.

15. The Human Dimension
What do we know about how humans process information and make decisions?
Not an awful lot!
Work of Kahneman and Tversky
Israeli Psychologists
Studied decision-making in the 1970’s
Particular study of military decision-making

16. Work of Kahneman and Tversky
The human mind has two modes of working – fast and slow.
Fast – from our evolution
Monitoring the senses
Keeping us safe
Fast, but shallow thinking
Very poor at assessing complex probabilities

17. Work of Kahneman and Tversky
Slow – a very human capability
Deep thought and study
Uses a lot of energy!
We tend to avoid it where possible
“Thinking so hard my head hurts”

18. Behavioural Science Thinking Fast – how most decisions are taken
Humans tend not to examine all available information in a structured and dispassionate way
Use “Heuristics” or “Rules of Thumb” to arrive at decisions (Cheat Sheets)
Make unconscious decisions as to the worth of different elements of information
Presentation greatly affects these decisions

19. Behavioural Science Forecast Decisions – typically made quickly
Fast Decisions
The only way a forecaster can assimilate all that data and come to a forecast / warning decision
We may presume that users act similarly

20. Behavioural Science
Training and experience enable an “Expert” to condense years of study and experience into a quick judgement
Non-experts find this much more difficult
From “Slow thinking process” to “Fast Judgement” is a learned skill

21. Behavioural Science The problem lies in the “biases”
Every person has biases, or blind-spots, and these affect especially our “fast” decisions.
The human attention-span is very short – it has been estimated at 8 secs!

22. Longer Attention-Span?
Estimated at 9 secs!!

23. Behavioural Science We really don’t know a lot about:
The mental procedure with which forecasters process information when they come to make forecast and warning decisions;
How people use these warnings, and how they modify their behaviour accordingly.
Now we are proposing to throw a lot more data at both forecasters and users

24. Behavioural Science It’s not all bad news!
One of the stronger known biases that people have is the “confirmation bias”
People will not make a decision to evacuate with information from just one source. They look for confirmation from other sources
Information on Social Media offers another source

25. Behavioural Science Back to SmartPhones…
Decisions to evacuate or take other significant actions in face of danger are “Fast” decisions – like “Fight or Flight” decisions
SmartPhones engage that “Fast” part of our brain behaviour – sampling and gathering large amounts of superficial data

26. Behavioural Science
SmartPhones and Social Media offer a perfect medium to disseminate supporting information to “official” warnings which will back up and provide additional depth to those warnings.
We have to learn to use these new paradigms of communication wisely

27. Behavioural Science Kahneman again:
“….I gave up on decision analysis. No-one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story”
“….the understanding of numbers is so weak that they don’t communicate anything”

28. Thank you 谢谢