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.
Despite great advancements in disaster forecasting and warning technology, it remains challenging to produce useful and usable forecasts and warnings in a way to 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 and actively promoted by WMO.
This session aims to showcase lessons learnt and best practices on impact based forecast 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 implementing 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 impact forecasts.