Early warning systems
Each year, disasters caused by extreme meteorological events, – tropical cyclones and severe storms, floods, heat waves and droughts – lead to significant loss of life and socioeconomic impacts, compromising socioeconomic development and growth particularly in the countries with the fewest resources.
According to the experts’ reports, the frequency and severity of such extremes is increasing, exacerbating the risks to lives and livelihoods around the world, particularly in the least developed countries. Investing in disaster risk reduction through early warning systems has been shown to reduce losses following major disasters, and to give beneficial returns.
In order to address such kind of disasters, societies need to set up effective early warning systems. Investments in weather, climate and water information services are a highly cost-efficient means of improving social welfare: according to the assessments, the benefits generated are worth at least three times more than the cost of the investments.
Every effective early warning system must have four elements, namely:
- monitoring, detection and forecasting of hydro-meteorological hazards, providing lead-times for action;
- a risk analysis;
- dissemination of timely and authoritative warnings;
- activation of emergency plans for preparation and response.
Over the last few decades, the development of supercomputers and IT-technologies for weather forecasting, have led to improvement of the timeliness and accuracy of forecasts related to the risks of extreme weather events, and hence to improvement of the readiness to take adequate measures.
