NOAA/National Weather Service's Chief Learning Office United States Department of Commerce
Commerce Learning Center

NWS Impact-Based Decision Support Services PDS

 Damage View

Weather-Ready Nation is about building community resilience in the face of increasing vulnerability to extreme weather. To achieve this goal, it is imperative that the NWS expand its capacity to provide superior impact-based decision support services (IDSS) in all phases of the disaster life cycle. This Professional Development Series (PDS) focuses on identifying professional competencies needed to perform IDSS, along with an inventory of instructional components available to build those skill sets.

PCU 7: Exercises and Evaluation


Gain experience and build relationships with partners through exercises.

Total Duration: 49 Hours

To find each course copy and paste the title into the search box on the CLC. You can also access each PCU curriculum from the IDSS PDS PCU 4-7 CLC Home Page.

Instructional Components:

  • IS-120 : Introduction to Exercises (5 hours)
  • EX: Deployment Experience (12 hours)
    • Shadow NWS Employee Deployments to:
      • Emergency Operations Center (EOC)
      • Incident Command Post (ICP)
      • Joint Information Center (JIC)
      • Emergency Management Office
      • Joint Field Office (JFO)
      • Interim Operating Facility (IOF)
      • Core Partner-based Event (i.e. - parade, festivals, sporting events, etc.)
    • Familiarization Visit(s) to EOC
  • EX: Interagency Cooperation   Partner Cooperation (16 hours)
    • Interagency tabletop exercise
    • Interagency functional exercise
    • Interagency full-scale exercise
    • Integrated Warning Team (IWT) meeting
    • Partner planning session for events and incidents
    • Other NWS partner-focused workshop
  • EX: NWS Coordination (8 hours)
    • Participate in a local/regional/national office exercise
    • Create a local/regional/national office exercise
  • EX: NWS Services Evaluation (8 hours)
    • Review recent NWS Service Assessments
    • Participate in/Conduct assessment of services
    • Participate in/Conduct an internal/interagency After-Action Review (AAR)
    • Participate in/Conduct debrief, event summary, etc.