This case study puts students in the role of the State Meteorologist charged with evaluating the case for nationalized tornado insurance program and developing a companion tornado education program for the public and insurers. Specifically, the committee is given the following two part charge.

Part I: Your commission has been asked to investigate the factors contributing to tornado risk and to develop a map of tornado risk for the US. Questions your commission should investigate include:

1. Which regions, states and cities are at risk of tornado hazards? What time of year do tornados occur and why? Is there variation in the time of occurrence from one location to another?
2. How do we detect, measure and monitor tornados? How good is the data available to determine tornado occurrence and intensity? How much does the tornado hazard vary in different locations and within the same location year to year and over decades?
3. What causes tornados and how well do we understand the causes of tornados? Can we develop a list of âœingredients❠that correspond to formation and intensity of tornados?
4. What are the factors affecting tornado risk? How do they vary geographically? How great is the risk in any one region (chosen by the student) and what factors influence your assessment of this risk? How well are those factors understood?
5. What is your recommendation on whether your state should join a national program for tornado hazard insurance?

Your final report to the committee must include a map of tornado hazard for your state and answers to the above questions.

Part II: An education program for the public and insurers about tornado characteristics and hazard must be prepared to allow both audiences input into the decision of whether to develop this national tornado insurance program.

A brochure must be prepared for your chosen state or community and should answer the questions below and any others you feel are important.

1. What is the likelihood of a tornado where I live, and how intense andn damaging could it be?
2. What is required to create a tornado? What sustains them and what makes them die out?
3. What is "tornado alley" and why does it exist?
4. What was the most intense tornado recorded? What was most damaging tornado ever?
5. Is a "dust devil" a miniature tornado or something different?
6. What are the obstacles to predicting tornado occurrence?
7. How does the weather radar work and what can they tell us about tornados?
8. How can we improve tornado detection and warnings?
9. How do we reduce the risk associated with tornados?

For each of these charges, the student will proceed through the investigation gathering the answers bit by bit and assembling them into a coherent understanding of tornados.

Who Should Use This?

The case study is designed for undergraduate students taking an introductory meteorology or earth hazards course. It is designed for two full lab periods or a mix of homework time and one lab period to complete, depending on how and when it is used in a course. It could also be used as a semester project, with the students exploring pieces of the case study over the course of the semester or as a wrap up to the semester.

The case study, when complete, will contain instructions sufficient for students and faculty with no expertise with a GIS application to be successful with the investigation. The materials will be available for use with both ESRI's ArcGIS and MyWorld GIS software, available through PASCO. Project files for both versions are available below. A field-test ready investigation will be available in August 2008.

The case study, orignally developed for upper division courses and students with GIS experience, has undergone an initial technical review and field testing. Based on feedback, we are redesigning it for introductory level students with no prior GIS expertise and incorporating a role playing scenario for the student.

We are seeking field testers for the fall 08 and spring 09 semesters. If interested, please contact us at hall at scieds.com.

>>  We ask field testers to use the peer review criteria we have been implementing as part of the DLESE Panel Review Processi when giving feedback on their field testing experience. These can be found at http://www.dlese-project.org/review_criteria.html.

Feel free to download the project files and explore the datasets.

Tornado General Concepts.m3vz

Download a 45 day Free Trial of MyWorld GIS

Tornado Project file (6 Mb)

Media Files (~50 Mb)

Entire Tornado Project (~1 Gb)

Science Education Solutions is grateful for the generous funding from the National Science Foundation for this project under Grant No. 0521936. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed on this website or the resources created and disseminated by SES are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.