Community and impact-based warnings: the site-specific early warning system framework
This briefing note highlights the importance of impact-based early warning systems (IB-EWS) in closing existing communication gaps by communicating on 'what the weather will do', the expected damages and the clear guidelines on what citizens and authorities can do to reduce their risk. Evidently, timely warnings alone do not guarantee that recipients will understand the message and that appropriate anticipatory actions will be performed to reduce their risk.
If communities are expected to implement IB-EWS, they need guidance to exploit their local risk knowledge to develop a system within their capabilities. For this purpose, as a step forward in the line of IB-EWS, the Site-Specific EWS (SS-EWS) framework has been developed. To develop and implement it, the following aspects should be taken into account:
- The SS-EWS framework adopts a community-based work scheme consisting of quantitative and qualitative data collection methods with community representatives.
- It is critical to understand local risk communication strategies and the characteristics that make specific locations highly exposed and vulnerable during hazards.
- Regional news outlets, social media, official reports from the authorities, insurance data and the recollections of the community representatives should be used to create community-specific hazard-impact databases.
- By evaluating these databases on a severity level scale, impact and advisory tables are co-developed and impact-based rainfall thresholds are proposed for the community and vulnerable locations
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