Early Warning Systems: Lost in Translation or Late by Definition? A FORIN Approach

Irasema Alcántara-Ayala,Anthony Oliver-Smith

doi:10.1007/s13753-019-00231-3

Abstract

Early warning systems (EWSs) are widely considered to be one of the most important mechanisms to prevent disasters around the globe. But as disasters continue to affect countries where EWSs have already been implemented, the striking disaster consequences have led us to reflect on the focus, architecture, and function of the warning systems. Since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami there has been a rapid rise in the promotion and use of EWSs to minimize disaster losses and damage. However, few researchers have addressed the question of their acceptability as an adaptive measure to the existing exposure conditions. EWSs are far more linked to emergency response and humanitarian crises and accepted technological interventions as solutions than they are to explicitly advance integrated analysis, disaster risk reduction, and policy making. A major flaw of EWSs is that the term “early” has been essentially used in reference to the speed of hazard onset, founded on a physicalist perspective that has encouraged a considerable dependence on technology. In this article we address the need for a clear understanding of the root causes and risk drivers of disaster risk creation, as advanced in the FORIN (forensic investigation of disasters) approach, as a prerequisite for the development of more articulated EWSs that could contribute to disaster risk reduction through policy making and practice, based on integrated and transdisciplinary management, in the interest of sustainable development, and human welfare and well-being.

Highlights

The Fallacy of Early Warning SystemsThe origin of early warning systems (EWSs) dates back to the 1980s, when famines in Sudan and Ethiopia generated the need to anticipate and avert future food crises (Kim and Guha-Sapir 2012)
In this article we address the need for a clear understanding of the root causes and risk drivers of disaster risk creation, as advanced in the Forensic Investigations of Disasters perspective (FORIN) approach, as a prerequisite for the development of more articulated Early warning systems (EWSs) that could contribute to disaster risk reduction through policy making and practice, based on integrated and transdisciplinary management, in the interest of sustainable development, and human welfare and well-being
The definition, architecture, and function of EWSs should be rewritten by stimulating their transformation into early warning articulated systems (EWASs), composed of a coordinated structure with the capacity to contribute to the implementation of strategies of action to achieve Disaster risk reduction (DRR) and disaster risk management (DRM) based on the understanding of disaster risk and disasters as a process constructed by societies

Summary

Introduction

The origin of early warning systems (EWSs) dates back to the 1980s, when famines in Sudan and Ethiopia generated the need to anticipate and avert future food crises (Kim and Guha-Sapir 2012). It can be argued that interlinkages within political economic history at subnational, national, regional, and global scales—between population growth, urbanization, marginalization, inequity, poverty, exclusion, lack of adequate health and education conditions, migration, rural and urban land-use patterns, construction of infrastructure, environmental degradation and ecosystem service depletion, among other social asymmetries and exploitative types of social organization and misuse and mismanagement of natural resources and environment—have contributed to the skyrocketing expansion of vulnerable societies in areas of high exposure to the potential impact of hazards, and to the increase of people at risk These disaster risk drivers, as mechanisms and linkages that underpin the current conditions of societies in both developed and developing countries (Alcantara-Ayala 2002), have been generated from the implementation of systems of growth and development (Wisner et al 2004; Oliver-Smith et al 2016). More recent evidence highlights the influence of poor urban governance, politics, and institutional structures on the social construction of urban vulnerability to flooding by analyzing the root causes of flood vulnerability in the core area of metropolitan Ibadan, Nigeria (Salami et al 2018)

Lost in Translation

Early Warning Systems

Hurricane Katrina

Findings

Discussion and Conclusions