Participatory Early Warning Systems: Youth, Citizen Science, and Intergenerational Dialogues on Disaster Risk Reduction in Brazil

Débora Olivato,Andréa Eliza Oliveira Luz,Rachel Trajber,Viviana Aguilar Muñoz,Fernando de Oliveira Pereira,Victor Marchezini

doi:10.1007/s13753-017-0150-9

Abstract

Building national people-centered early warning systems (EWS) is strongly recommended by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). Most of the scientific literature is critical of the conventional view of EWS as a linear model with a top-down approach, in which technological features are given more attention than human factors. It is argued that EWS should be people-centered, and used for risk prevention, with an emphasis on resilience, rather than only being triggered when a hazard occurs. However, both the UNISDR and the literature fail to say how a people-centered EWS should be built, and what steps are needed to put EWS into effect. This article examines the obstacles and measures required to promote people-centered EWS, with a focus on the situation in Brazil. After assessing the institutional vulnerability of EWS, we analyze some measures that can be taken to reduce institutional vulnerability, based on experiences with a participatory citizen science educational project that involved high school students. Some guidelines are developed for adopting a bottom-up approach towards achieving the four elements of EWS—risk knowledge, monitoring, communication of warnings, and response capability—with the help of school curricula.

Highlights

Three international conferences on early warning systems (EWS)—1998, 2003, 2006—addressed technical matters, strategic issues, and institutional requirements and made recommendations for strengthening EWS, including incorporating EWS into new policies and developmental frameworks (UNISDR 2004, 2006a, b)
The concept of EWS does refer to forecasting hazards, but can be applied to building resilience (Thomalla and Larsen 2010) and reducing vulnerability (Kelman and Glantz 2014). This can be mainstreamed as a DRR strategy across multiple levels of governments (Zia and Wagner 2015), and work together with institutions, authorities, scientists, decision makers and all the communities involved in disaster risk reduction (DRR) (Alcantara-Ayala and Oliver-Smith 2017)
The pilot phase of Cemaden Education Project in Paraitinga watershed aimed to build a participatory framework to fill this gap in order to provide guidelines to expand the project for other high schools in Brazil using e-learning platform.1 do Paraitinga, the old high school building was destroyed during the 2010 flood, and the new one was reconstructed in a flood-prone area

Summary

Introduction

Three international conferences on early warning systems (EWS)—1998, 2003, 2006—addressed technical matters, strategic issues, and institutional requirements and made recommendations for strengthening EWS, including incorporating EWS into new policies and developmental frameworks (UNISDR 2004, 2006a, b). The concept of EWS does refer to forecasting hazards, but can be applied to building resilience (Thomalla and Larsen 2010) and reducing vulnerability (Kelman and Glantz 2014) This can be mainstreamed as a DRR strategy across multiple levels of governments (Zia and Wagner 2015), and work together with institutions, authorities, scientists, decision makers and all the communities involved in disaster risk reduction (DRR) (Alcantara-Ayala and Oliver-Smith 2017). We conclude that policymakers must create a participatory EWS that strikes a balance between top-down/technocentric and bottom-up/peoplecentered approaches that can be adapted to multiple audiences

Institutional Vulnerability to a Participatory Early Warning System in Brazil

Building Bridges to the ‘‘First Mile’’ Approach

Research Sites

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion