The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is encouraging National Meteorological and Hydrological Services worldwide to move towards impact forecasting to help mitigate the impacts of weather-related hazards. Impact forecasting involves not just the physical hazards but also the societal exposure and vulnerability to those hazards in the decision to provide warnings, and the content of the warning messages.

The purpose of the Impact-based Forecasts and Warnings (IBFW) project is to identify the gaps relating to IBFWs, and define a research direction to help fill those gaps going forward. The international project team is conducting a gap analysis based on the literature, available guidance, previous workshops and discussions, and experiences of forecasters and practitioners collected through an open and free virtual workshop series. The output will be a freely-accessible journal article summarising the findings.

The IBFW project is a WMO WWRP HIWeather Flagship Project, and is being conducted in collaboration with the WMO Services Commission Expert Team on IBFW. The project runs from early 2022 until late 2023.