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

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 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.

“What is a Sociologist Doing Here?” An Unconventional People-Centered Approach to Improve Warning Implementation in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

“…The human and social dimensions in warning systems are exemplified in many terminologies used in the scientific and grey literature: people-centered EWSs (UNISDR 2005), community early warning systems -CEWS (IFRC 2012), citizen-centered EWSs (Mustafa et al 2015), community-centric EWSs (Baudoin et al 2016), communitybased EWSs (Macherera and Chimbari 2016a), and participatory EWSs (Marchezini, Trajber, et al 2017).…”

“…In Zimbabwe, despite some progress in promoting disaster education for some children that are in schools, children were not aware of any disaster management plan in the community, and their level of preparedness was low, which indicated a need for community-centered early warning systems (Muzenda-Mudavanhu et al 2016). In Brazil, despite developing participatory methodologies to engage high schools in the four elements of EWSs with the help of school curricula, the challenge is to scale up pilot projects to other schools that are located in flood-and landslide-prone areas (Marchezini, Trajber, et al 2017). The problem overall is not the lack of knowledge and/or recommendations.…”

“…It is essential to promote the use of the amplified version of the disaster risk equation (Wisner et al 2012) to point out the importance of public policies of mitigation in the articulated warning systems (Alcántara-Ayala and Oliver-Smith 2017). To formulate proposals aligned with this scope, it is necessary to: (1) identify and connect different types of national/regional warning systems (Table 1), including those promoted by UN agencies; (2) tailor warning systems for different sectors, such as urban planning (Zia and Wagner 2015) and education (Marchezini, Trajber, et al 2017); and (3) engage different audiences in warning systems.…”

A Review of Studies on Participatory Early Warning Systems (P-EWS): Pathways to Support Citizen Science Initiatives

“…The scientific literature has been adopting two main approaches of EWS -the "last mile" (hazard-centered and top down) and "first mile" (people-centered and bottom up) (Basher, 2006;Thomalla and Larsen, 2010;Garcia and Fearnley, 2012;Villagrán de León, 2012;Kelman and Glantz, 2014). This work will lie on the "first mile" approach, focusing on people-centered EWS (United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction [UNISDR], 2005[UNISDR], , 2006b, community early warning systems -CEWS (International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies [IFRC], 2012), community-centric EWS (Baudoin et al, 2016), community-based EWS (Macherera and Chimbari, 2016a), participatory EWS (Baudoin et al, 2016;Marchezini et al, 2017).…”

Technological Ecosystems in Citizen Science: A Framework to Involve Children and Young People

“…Citizens have valuable knowledge that is often beyond the reach of scientists [67], are knowledgeable about what is happening in their communities and can tell which stakeholders should be involved [18]. Although young people are part of society and in the last century have distinguished themselves as a social group, their needs, experience, learning and knowledge have been neglected [68]. They do not feel involved in setting research agendas or formulating policies that affect the society of which they are part.…”