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 topdown 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 EWSrisk knowledge, monitoring, communication of warnings, and response capability-with the help of school curricula.

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With the increase in frequency and visibility of disasters in contemporary state societies, national governments have developed a collection of agencies to manage catastrophic events. These institutions invariably deal with human populations as a political, scientific, and biological problem, an approach Michel Foucault described as biopolitical. In this article, I discuss some aspects of disaster governance, focusing on the long-term recovery process. Specifically, I analyze the fundamental biopolitical assumptions of the discourses and practices on the part of governmental disaster response agencies in São Luiz do Paraitinga, Brazil. In this case of biopolitical response to disaster, the discourses and practices implemented by governmental agencies created the illusion that state agencies successfully responded to the disaster by saving biological lives. This article shows how these biopolitcal discourses and practices also had the unintended and unacknowledged effects of devaluing social lives and abandoning disaster-affected populations. By calling attention to the unintended and unacknowledged effects of biopolitical governance, this article demonstrates how disaster anthropology can document and address the shortcomings of governmental disaster recovery policy and practice.

Context: Global environmental change and disasters pose several challenges to governments, society and science. These challenges occurred in social contexts were information and communication technologies can be used to share data and information, engaging citizen scientists in multidirectional and decentralized knowledge creation initiatives. Often referenced as participatory (or people-centered) early warning systems, this has been of a great potential to improve decisions taken by both emergency institutions and exposed and/or affected communities. Several methodologies have been proposed, mainly in natural science, redefining traditional ways of transferring knowledge about scientific process to the public.

Promoting climate change transformation with young people in Brazil: participatory action research through a looping approach. Action Research.

warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications A B S T R A C TThe tasks of disaster risk monitoring and early warning are an important means of improving the efficiency of disaster response and preparedness. However, although the current works in this area have sought to provide a more accurate and better technological infrastructure of systems to support these tasks, they have failed to examine key features that may affect the decision-making. In light of this, this paper aims to provide an understanding of the decision-making process in control rooms for disaster risk monitoring and early warning. This understanding is underpinned by a conceptual framework, which has been developed in this work and describes factors that influence the decision-making. For doing so, data were collected through a series of semi-structured interviews and participatory observations and later evaluated with members of the control room of the Brazilian Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters (Cemaden). The study findings provided a solid basis for designing the conceptual framework of the essential factors required by the decision-makers. These factors are separated into two groups: 1) the "dimensions" of decision-making (i.e., the type of hazard, the phase of the disaster risk, the location, and area of expertise of the operators) and the "pillars" of decision-making (i.e., the tasks, their required information, useful data sources, and the decision rule). Finally, the contributions achieved in this study may help operators to understand and propose proactive measures that could improve their decision-making, overcome uncertainties, standardize the team's decision-making, and put less pressure on operators.

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015−2030’s (SFDRR) framing moved away from disaster risk as a natural phenomenon to the examination of the inequality and injustice at the root of human vulnerability to hazards and disasters. Yet, its achievements have not seriously challenged the long-established capitalist systems of oppression that hinder the development leading to disaster risk creation. This article is an exploratory mapping exercise of and a collective reflection on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and SFDRR indicators—and their use in measuring progress towards disaster risk reduction (DRR). We highlight that despite the rhetoric of vulnerability, the measurement of progress towards DRR remains event/hazard-centric. We argue that the measurement of disaster risk could be greatly enhanced by the integration of development data in future iterations of global DRR frameworks for action.

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