Earthquake early warning (EEW) is a relatively new strategy for reducing disaster risk and increasing resilience to seismic hazard in urban settings. EEW systems provide real-time information about ongoing earthquakes, enabling individuals, communities, governments, businesses and others located at distance to take timely action to reduce the probability of harm or loss before the earthquake-induced ground shaking reaches them. Examples of potential losses mitigated by EEW systems include injuries and infrastructure

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Every year, natural hazards affect millions of people around the world, causing significant economic and life losses. The rapid progress of technology and advances in understanding of the highly complex physical phenomena related to various natural hazards have promoted the development of new disaster-mitigation tools, such as earthquake early warning (EEW) systems. However, there is a general lack of integration between the multi-and crossdisciplinary elements of EEW, limiting its effectiveness and applications for end users. This paper reviews the current state-of-the-art in EEW, exploring both the technical components (i.e., seismological and engineering) as well as the socio-organizational components (i.e., social science, policy, and management) of EEW systems. This includes a discussion of specific evidence from case studies of Italy, United States' West Coast, Japan, and Mexico, where EEW systems have reached varying levels of maturity. Our aim is to highlight necessary improvements for increasing the effectiveness of the technical aspects of EEW in terms of their implications on operational, political/legal, social, behavioral, and organizational drivers. Our analysis suggests open areas for research, associated with: 1) the information that needs to be included in EEW alerts to implement successful mitigation actions at both individual and organizational levels; 2) the need for response training to the community by official bodies, such as civil protection; 3) existing gaps in the attribution of accountability and development of liability policies involving EEW implementation; 4) the potential for EEW to increase seismic resilience of critical infrastructure and lifelines; 5) the need for strong organizational links with first responders and official EEW bodies; and 6) the lack of engineering-related (i.e., risk and resilience) metrics currently used to support decision making related to the triggering of alerts by various end users.

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To maximize the potential of earthquake early warning (EEW) as a credible tool for seismic resilience promotion, it should be combined with next-generation decision-support tools that use advanced risk-based predictions and account for unavoidable malfunctions of the system (i.e., false alarms) to determine whether or not alerts/mitigation actions should be triggered. This work contributes to the required effort by developing a novel end-user-oriented approach for decision making related to very short-term earthquake risk management. The proposed methodology unifies earthquake-engineering-related performance assessment procedures/metrics (for end-user-focused damage and consequence estimation) with multicriteria decision-making tools (to consider end-user preferences toward different types of risks). It is demonstrated for EEW in a hypothetical school building, to specifically investigate the optimal decisions (i.e., "trigger"/"do not trigger" alerts) for a range of earthquake scenarios with varying parameter uncertainties. In particular, it is found that the best action for a given ground-shaking intensity can depend on stakeholder (end-user) preferences.

In our rapidly urbanizing world, many hazard-prone regions face significant challenges regarding risk-informed urban development. This study addresses this issue by investigating evolving spatial interactions between natural hazards, ever-increasing urban areas, and social vulnerability in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. The methodology considers: (1) the characterization of flood hazard and liquefaction susceptibility using pre-existing global models; (2) the simulation of future urban built-up areas using the cellular-automata SLEUTH model; and (3) the assessment of social vulnerability, using a composite index tailored for the case-study area. Results show that built-up areas in Kathmandu Valley will increase to 352 km2 by 2050, effectively doubling the equivalent 2018 figure. The most socially vulnerable villages will account for 29% of built-up areas in 2050, 11% more than current levels. Built-up areas in the 100-year and 1000-year return period floodplains will respectively increase from 38 km2 and 49 km2 today to 83 km2 and 108 km2 in 2050. Additionally, built-up areas in liquefaction-susceptible zones will expand by 13 km2 to 47 km2. This study illustrates how, where, and to which extent risks from natural hazards can evolve in socially vulnerable regions. Ultimately, it emphasizes an urgent need to implement effective policy measures for reducing tomorrow's natural-hazard risks.