15 U.S.C. § 8514 — Hurricane forecast improvement program

(a) In general. The Under Secretary, working with the U.S. weather industry and academic groups it picks, must run a project to make hurricane forecasts better. (b) Goal. The project's goal is to build more accurate hurricane forecasts and warnings, to cut down on deaths, injuries, and economic damage. It focuses on: (1) predicting when a hurricane will suddenly get stronger, and predicting its track; (2) forecasting and communicating storm surge; (3) using research on how people understand risk to make watches and warnings work better; and (4) testing and adding new kinds of observations, including sound-based measurements, where that makes sense. (c) Project plan. Within one year after April 18, 2017, the Under Secretary — acting through the Assistant Administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and working with the Director of the National Weather Service — had to write a plan for the project. The plan must spell out the specific research, development, and technology-transfer work needed to reach the goal in (b), along with the resources and timeline for doing it.