The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cannot reveal weather forecasts from a particularly accurate hurricane prediction model to the public that pays for the American government agency – because of a deal with a private insurance risk firm.
The model at issue is called the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP) Corrected Consensus Approach (HCCA). In 2023, it was deemed in a National Hurricane Center (NHC) report [PDF] to be one of the two “best performers,” the other being a model called IVCN (Intensity Variable Consensus).
2020 contract between NOAA and RenaissanceRe Risk Sciences, disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Washington Post, requires NOAA to keep HCCA forecasts – which incorporate a proprietary technique from RenaissanceRe – secret for five years.
Right, it just seems like when you say, “that’s not the way the government usually receives a product”, that you are implying there’s something wrong with the way they received this product.
It just seems so unrelated to what you deal with (scientific studies vs software products) that it isn’t even worth mentioning.
I can see that. But no.
Like I said, not sure how it works with software. Was only involved with that once and it worked pretty much the same as hardware.