The mission of OK-FIRST is to help Oklahoma’s public safety officials make better and quicker decisions during weather-impacted situations. Good decision-making during critical situations, and during routine situations, can save lives, money and resources.

OK-FIRST also seeks to enhance multi-disciplinary cooperation among and between public safety offices, operational meteorologists, and the academic community. Close cooperation before, during, and after hazardous weather events will only serve to help the public’s preparedness and response.

OK-FIRST pursues its mission in three major arenas:

Training & Education
Each year, OK-FIRST holds a variety of data interpretation workshops for public safety officials. The workshops are led by OCS and OK-FIRST personnel, but often feature involvement from a number of operational meteorological offices, including the National Weather Service’s Warning Decision Training Branch, Storm Prediction Center, and Weather Forecast Offices in the region.

For those seeking entry into the program, a weeklong course introduces participants to meteorological concepts, radar and the OK-FIRST decision-support system. These Full Certification courses are typically held twice per year. Fully-certified participants may also send their assistants and support staff to a two-day Assistants Course for basic radar interpretation fundamentals. These courses are offered about five times per year, usually in regional locations (such as a local Technology Center). Fully-certified participants are also required to attend at least one Recertification Workshop every 18 months. These workshops refresh previous training, introduce new data sources and technologies, update program issues and re-enact recent hazardous weather cases. Recertification Workshops are offered 8-10 times per year, also in regional locations.

Data Services and Infrastructure
The backbone of OK-FIRST is its varied and robust weather information. The program provides real-time data from many platforms, including: radar, Oklahoma Mesonet, lightning data, upper-air observations, computer model output, and satellite imagery. These are combined with text products (forecasts, advisories, watches, warnings, and severe weather updates) from national, regional, and local National Weather Service offices.

Participants have real-time access to multiple products from 15 National Weather Service radars in and around Oklahoma. The information suite for each radar includes more than a dozen reflectivity, velocity, and derived products at up to four tilts. OK-FIRST’s complete set of Oklahoma weather is updated every five minutes for 115 locations across the state.

Federal data (radar, satellite, watches, warnings) is brought into the OK-FIRST data stream via satellite using OCS’s NOAAport system. Mesonet data is provided directly from the Oklahoma Mesonet’s servers. This data is provided to public safety officials over the Internet within seconds of its arrival. Participants utilize OCS’s visualization software to display much of the data provided by OK-FIRST. This allows them to download only the raw weather data, instead of post-processed images. This method has three major advantages:

1. Speed of delivery. Raw data packets are much smaller than images. In addition, no server time is lost processing incoming data. This speeds delivery, especially to offices which are not equipped with high-speed internet access.
2. Completeness of information. Because OK-FIRST data is the raw data, nothing is smoothed, masked or filtered until the OK-FIRST participant chooses to do so. This preserves the integrity of the data and its details.
3. Versatility. OCS visualization software allows users to zoom, pan, or scan to their area of interest, as well as add, drop or customize layers of interest (such as highways, geographical information, or other weather data).

Decision Support
Above all, OK-FIRST is a decision support system. The everyday tools of its participants are designed to provide a real-time data stream that is combined with, and reflective of, their training. Advanced tools such as the Oklahoma Fire Danger Model become even more useful to the OK-FIRST participant when he/she has been trained on its unique properties and data sources, and when online guides that refer to prior training are available for use in real-time scenarios.