Following the post-2015 development agenda, the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction and its seventh global target was adopted by 187 Member States recognizing that increased efforts are required to develop risk- and impact-informed multi-hazard early warning systems. Humanitarian assistance triggered by timely information on possible emerging disasters has the potential to reduce the impacts of the natural hazard playing a substantial role on social and economic development. While operational progress in multi-hazard forecast systems has been achieved in the last decade, financing for disaster risk management is still mainly allocated for emergency response, reconstruction, and rehabilitation plans, and not for forecast-based early actions.
Despite great advancements in disaster forecasting and warning technology, it remains challenging to produce useful and usable forecasts and warnings in a way to disburse funding and trigger early actions. Overcoming these challenges requires understanding of the reliability of forecast tools and implementation barriers in combination with the development of new risk-informed processes. To deal with the problem of coming into action in response to imperfect forecasts, novel science-based concepts have recently emerged. As an example, Forecast-based Financing and Impact-based Forecasting are currently being used operationally by both governmental and non-governmental organisations in several countries as result of increasing international effort to reduce disaster losses.
This session aims to showcase lessons learnt and best practices on forecast-based disaster risk reduction from the perspective of both the knowledge producers and users. It presents novel methods to translate forecast of various climate-related hazards into impact. It also addresses the role of humanitarian agency, scientists and communities at risk in creating standard operating procedures to determine a portfolio of economically feasible actions and reflects on influence of forecast uncertainty across different time scales in decision-making. Moreover, it provides an overview of state-of-the-art methods, to discuss innovative ways of addressing the difficulties in forecast-based actions and the improvement of multi-risk models and tools.
We invite submission on the development and use of operational forecast systems for early action; developing cost-efficient portfolios of early actions for climate-related impact preparedness such as cash-transfer for droughts, weather-based insurance for floods; assessments on the types and costs of possible forecast-based disaster risk management actions; practical applications of forecasts of impacts; and others.