The WMO challenge to develop and demonstrate the best new user-oriented forecast verification metric

To encourage the development of user-oriented verification approaches and support the major projects of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) World Weather Research Program, a challenge was issued to develop and demonstrate new user-oriented forecast verification metrics.

Several new forecast verification metrics were proposed to meet the needs of very different user-communities including public safety and amenity, shipping, aviation, defence, agriculture, and water resources. A few general purpose metrics were also proposed. The winner of the inaugural verification challenge proposed a new metric called the Spatial Probability Score for assessing forecasts for the location of a relevant boundary or contour, for example, sea ice edge or extent of flood inundation.