Fig 1.
a) Schematic of the impact vs likelihood matrix, derived from the NSWWS. The alert code depends on both the uncertainty of the forecast (along the columns) and the strength of the impact (along the rows); b) Schematic showing the relation between the RR (excess deaths) and the temperature during summer (in degrees C).
The temperature range is adjusted to reproduce a RR between 1.0 and 1.16 by using the linear relationship.
Table 1.
Summary of the alerts issued at the end of July 2013 by the current system in use in the Heatwave Plan for England.
The regional risk of meeting heatwave action trigger temperatures is in percentage and is shown for each of the 9 NSWWS regions.
Fig 2.
The first guess alerts generated by the prototype system are shown along each row (for the day after up to 4 days ahead). The days are rearranged to be always the same along the columns. The color scheme is explained with the matrix at the bottom right of the figure (where the forecast lead time is used as a proxy for forecast uncertainty). The bottom left panel illustrates an example of a detailed regional alert for the South-West. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are left blank as they do not share the same alert system for health forecasting.
Table 2.
of the alerts issued during March 2013 by the current system in use in the Heatwave Plan for England.
The regional risk of meeting heatwave action trigger temperatures is in percentage and is shown for each of the 9 NSWWS regions.
Fig 3.
As in Fig 2, but for the case during March 2013.
Fig 4.
Semi-operational first guess alerts for summer 2014.
As in Figs 2 and 3, the forecast dates are along the top, and the issue dates down the side. “Z” refers to Zulu Time as is the same as UTC. Dates with alerts are circled in the figure. The image in the bottom left shows the local forecast for South East England on 18–19 July, issued on 17 July. In the top right of the smaller image one can see the matrix indicating the most severe type of event forecast in that region. Note that forecasts issued on 16 July are missing due to the system going down on that day.