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Forecast Dissemination Mini-Market 2 of 3: Hurricane Hazards

$350raised
$200valuation
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Pitch deck for my projects found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yjCCO-2-ClpKiLTNyijbf0XdHbMqJfCq/view?usp=sharing

Project description

I’ve been working in forecasting for a few years now, and I’ve seen lots of great forecasts (and forecasters) that aren’t able to reach the people who would benefit most from them. I’m launching this project to evaluate the impact of publicly disseminating relevant forecasts through targeted ads, while also supporting the development of standards for impact reporting that can be used for future markets.

This project is one component of three-project collection that is designed to leverage impact markets in order to explicitly prioritize between three different sets of forecasts to promote - the more funding a given project receives, the more reach ads connected with that project will have.

Investments in this specific project will go towards promoting forecasts that help people in the path of an incoming hurricane get good information their risk and take actions to mitigate it, and evaluate the effectiveness of that campaign.

Once this project is complete, the results and estimated impact will be published using the standardized format developed in “Standardized Tools for Impact Market Reporting”.

What is your track record on similar projects?

I’m a professional forecaster working for Amazon (I also won the ACX 2022 forecasting contest). I’ve previously done work in survey research and causal inference, with a focus on evaluating the effectiveness of educational interventions.

I previously worked in litigation, where I conducted similar research projects for expert testimony in labor and accounting-related lawsuits.

My recent professional focus has been on automating the use of forecasts in business decisionmaking, and this project is a part of my personal interest in “aligning” institutions and market outcomes with human values.

How will you spend your funding?

When the first hurricane predicted to make landfall in the US in 2023 is identified, I’ll be using the funds received in this project to target online ads towards individuals living in areas at risk of flooding, directing them towards government forecasts of hurricane risk in their area and resources to help them get to safety. I will collect metrics on the performance of these ads and follow up with a survey designed to evaluate their effectiveness.

I’m personally putting $250 towards each of these mini-markets ($750 total) to provide a baseline ad purchase. Additional funding will be used to broaden the target audience for ads, which I expect will increase impact in a roughly linear way.

If no hurricane predicted to hit the US has developed by July 15, I will retarget the funds raised here towards a different set of weather-related risks in order to collect and analyze useful data by the project end date.

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RyanKupyn avatar

Ryan Kupyn

over 1 year ago

Project Update:

My report on this project

Detailed Questions
1. How much money have you spent so far? Have you gotten more funding from other sources? Do you need more funding?

In total, I spent about $300 on this project, including the $250 received from the original grantors. This money was spent purchasing advertising as described in the complete project report, but some was also spent evaluating approaches to quantifying this project's impact. I provided all the other funding used in this project

2. How is the project going? (a few paragraphs)

This project is complete! You can see my results and thoughts in detail at the link: above, but I've adopted the content here as well:

This project is part of a set of three related projects with two goals:

1. Testing the use of targeted advertising to disseminate forecasts to audiences when and where they are most useful.

2. Using the impact market funding process to identify and fund forecasts that would be useful to disseminate more widely.

This particular project focused on disseminating forecasts of hurricane risk to people living in areas with high future risk, but which hadn't recently experienced a major storm.

To do this, I purchased advertising directing people to forecasts of future hurricane risks and information on how to prepare. When I decided to purchase these ads in early August, hurricane activity had been low up to that point in the year, so I decided to serve advertisements to people in an area that I thought had relatively high risk of future hurricanes, but which hadn't been severely affected by one in a few decades. By coincidence, the area I selected - Tampa, Florida - is currently (as I write this) in the path of the most severe hurricane to make landfall in that area since 1921.

The ads I launched generated 16,283 impressions and reached 10,150 distinct accounts. These advertisements were served to 30-to-60-year-olds physically located in Tampa, Florida. The ads ran for roughly one week in early August, 2023.

129 of the accounts reached through this ad went on to visit forecasts of hurricane risk.

Impact Calculation

The impact of this project depends on whether people informed of forecasts of future hurricane risks change their behaviour to reduce their future risk, and reduce the damage incurred by the storm. To get a sense of the potential scope of improvement, the last major Hurricane to hit Florida, Hurricane Wilma, caused about $19 billion in damage across the state (https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/news/UpdatedCostliest.pdf), or about $1,065 per resident at the time. If we assume a similar amount of damage per capita due to the hurricane currently hitting Tampa, and that the average person informed of hurricane risk was able to reduce the damage by about 1%, the value of this project is about $1,374.

3. How well has your project gone compared to where you expected it to be at this point? (Score from 1-10, 10 = Better than expected)

I would rate this project at around a 7-out-of-10. I think that disseminating additional information on hurricane forecasts has fairly low value most of the time, but that I got lucky by spending money to get this information in front of people a few weeks before a major storm.

4. Are there any remaining ways you need help, besides more funding?

Not at the moment - I consider this project to be complete for now.

5. Any other thoughts or feedback?

Not on this project - though my feedback from other projects should apply here as well.

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RyanKupyn avatar

Ryan Kupyn

almost 2 years ago

Hi folks!

I'm holding a 30-minute pitch call for my projects this Thursday at 5:00 pm Pacific time. This call will include more information on the work I plan to do and why I think it's important, as well as an opportunity for direct Q&A.

You can send any questions you'd like me to address to impact@ryankupyn.com (or ask them here of course).

Meeting link:

https://meet.google.com/rpv-yymq-pvj