From Top-Down to “Community-Centric” Approaches to Early Warning Systems: Exploring Pathways to Improve Disaster Risk Reduction Through Community Participation

Abstract

Natural hazards and their related impacts can have powerful implications for humanity, particularly communities with deep reliance on natural resources. The development of effective early warning systems (EWS) can contribute to reducing natural hazard impacts on communities by improving risk reduction strategies and activities. However, current shortcomings in the conception and applications of EWS undermine risk reduction at the grassroots level. This article explores various pathways to involve local communities in EWS from top-down to more participatory approaches. Based on a literature review and three case studies that outline various levels of participation in EWS in Kenya, Hawai'i, and Sri Lanka, the article suggests a need to review the way EWS are designed and applied, promoting a shift from the traditional expert-driven approach to one that is embedded at the grassroots level and driven by the vulnerable communities. Such a community-centric approach also raises multiple challenges linked to a necessary shift of conception of EWS and highlights the need for more research on pathways for sustainable community engagement.

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

“…Our study goes beyond the existing approaches by showing how the educational sector and young people can be involved in the four interrelated elements of EWS by integrating DRR into school curricula and adopting citizen science and crowdsourcing approaches. This would fill an important gap in the DRR education and participatory EWS agenda, as stressed in several studies (Kelman and Glantz 2014;Baudoin et al 2016). As stated by Baudoin et al (2016) in their analysis of EWS case studies in Kenya, Hawaii, and Sri Lanka, education is a critical component of EWS because it can be used for preserving and sharing local knowledge.…”

“…Evidence from case studies around the world has been found of failings and institutional vulnerabilities related to the implementation of EWS and its effectiveness, such as (1) poor communication of warnings from forecasters to end users and the inaccessibility of warnings (Baudoin et al 2016); (2) a lack of capacity and funding; (3) poor data management and limited data access; and (4) the lack of an evaluation of EWS (Lumbroso et al 2016). Brazil also has similar institutional vulnerabilities in its relatively recent EWS, mainly in its attempt to adopt a people-centered approach, but these vulnerabilities may increase due to dynamic pressures such as political instability and financial crisis.…”

“…This article seeks to contribute to the existing literature on participatory and community-centric EWS (IFRC 2012;Baudoin et al 2016). Our study goes beyond the existing approaches by showing how the educational sector and young people can be involved in the four interrelated elements of EWS by integrating DRR into school curricula and adopting citizen science and crowdsourcing approaches.…”

“…During the dialogue with the resident, the students found that the elderly woman was illiterate. To solve this problem, the students created a rain gauge using images and colors to help in reading the rain gauge and enable data collection-a similar initiative was reported by Baudoin et al (2016) in their analysis of EWS in Sri Lanka. During the seminar in Cunha, the school director also proudly reported that in February 2016 a heavy summer rainfall occurred.…”

“…Our study is directly concerned with high school students and teachers, and is thus able to contribute to more informed decision making and community planning-an area that still raises serious challenges (Kelman and Glantz 2014;Baudoin et al 2016). Through a Brazilian case study, this article shows how citizen science, crowdsourcing, and participatory approaches can be embedded in regular core subjects.…”