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A. N. M. Rashad Hasan
University of Dhaka

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Introduction
The term ‘early warning’ is used in many fields to describe the provision of information on
an emerging dangerous circumstance where that information can enable action in advance to
reduce the risks involved. Early warning systems exist for natural geophysical and biological
hazards, complex sociopolitical emergencies, industrial hazards, personal health risks and
many other related hazards. Early warning systems contribute with other DRR interventions
to protect and support sustainable economic development and early detection of undesirable
situations. The society benefits from early warning systems in place. Early warning systems
can be set up to avoid or reduce the impact of hazards as flood, flashfloods, landslides,
storms, forest fires etc. The significance of an effective early warning system lies in the
recognition of its benefits by the members of the general public.
A people-centered early warning system necessarily comprises four key elements:
a. Knowledge of the risks
b. Monitoring, analysis and forecasting of the hazards
c. Communication or dissemination of alerts and warnings and
d. Local capacities to respond to the warnings received
Globally, Bangladesh is mainly alluvial deltaic plain divided into three zones, namely hills,
terraces and flood plain based on geomorphology and physiographic. The country has
geographical location in South Asia forming lower part of the basins of three mighty rivers,
the Padma (Known as the Ganges in India), the Brahmaputra and the Meghna. More than 310
rivers and tributaries have made this country a land of rivers. The geographical location, land
characteristics, multiplicity of rivers and the monsoon climate render Bangladesh highly
vulnerable to natural hazards. The coastal morphology of Bangladesh influences the impact
of natural hazards on the area. Especially in the south western area, natural hazards increase
the vulnerability of the coastal dwellers and slow down the process of social and economic
development. Natural and human induced hazards such as floods, cyclones, droughts, tidal
surges, tornadoes, earthquakes, river erosion, fire, infrastructure collapse, high arsenic
contents of ground water, water logging, water and soil salinity, epidemic, and various forms
of pollution are frequent occurrences. There are severer experiences of many extreme
disasters occurred in Bangladesh. Cyclones and tidal surges attacked Bangladesh in 1991,
1998, 2000, 2004 and 2007. Flood-risk hotspots are identified in Middle and Northern-
Eastern part of Bangladesh. Recent severe floods: 1988, 1998, 2004 and 2007. Floods in
Bangladesh in 2007 occur two times prolonged causing 40% crop loss, outbreak of diarrhea

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diseases and severe food insecurity. If there were established a strong Early Warning Systems
it might be reduce the extreme loses.
Community Based Early Warning System
Community-Based Early Warning Systems (CBEWS) are anchored in the communities and
managed by the communities. It is based on a "people-centered" approach that empowers
individuals and communities threatened by hazards to act in sufficient time and in an
appropriate manner in a bid to reduce the possibility of personal injury, loss of life, damage to
property, environment and loss of livelihood.
It provides communities, practitioners and organizations involved in disaster risk
management with advance information of risks that can be readily translated into
prevention, preparedness and response actions.
CBEWS helps to reduce economic losses by allowing people to better protect their assets
and livelihood.
The true essence and significance of CBEWS is community empowerment.
CBEWS suggests that people of a community can be capable and it empowers them to
protect and prepare themselves and make them resilient against the disastrous effects. The
communities are in the best position to undertake preparedness measures against
disasters.
The basic requirements of CBEWS are that individuals and institutions have knowledge
about what is threatening them, that people are able to communicate a change in threats,
and that they are in a position to respond.
Essential features of Community-Based Early Warning Systems
All community members especially the vulnerable groups should be involved at all stages
of the CBEWS from designing to operating the systems, receiving the warning messages
and responding to the warning.
Measures taken should be based on the needs of everyone in the community including the
most vulnerable segments of the community.
The community members will own the process and system.
CBEWS measures will enhance the capacity of the community members to deal with
their situation.
Meaningful participation in the decision-making process of EWS.

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Defining Early Warning System (EWS): approaches
The ‘people-centered’ elements require many systematic approaches and diverse activities
spanning the four elements of early warning systems as:
Identifying target population, especially the vulnerable and disadvantaged and interacting
with them to determine needs and capacities;
Conducting community meetings and involving communities in exploring and mapping
their risks and planning their responses;
Fostering the development by communities of monitoring and warning systems for local
hazards;
Generating public information tailored to target groups;
Developing formal mechanisms for community representatives to monitor and oversee
warning system design;
Providing training for observers, authorities and communicators who operate the warning
system;
Providing exercises and simulations to enable people to experience and practice warning
interpretation and responses.
Effective Early Warning Systems
A warning system must empower individuals, communities and businesses to respond timely
and appropriately to hazards in order to reduce the risk of death, injury, property loss and
damage. Warnings must get the message across and stimulate those at risk to take action.
Increasingly precise warnings are required by disaster mitigation decision-makers. These
require improvements in weather warnings (Gunasekera 2004):
a) Extending the lead time of warnings;
b) Improving the accuracy of warnings;
c) Greater demand for probabilistic forecasts;
d) Better communication and dissemination of warnings;
e) Using new techniques to alert the public;
f) Targeting of the warning services to relevant and specific users (right information to right
people at right time and right place); and
g) Warning messages are understood and the appropriate action taken in response.
Longer lead times should be considered together with the need to reduce false alarm rates and
a balance should be struck between the two whereby decisions can be based on optimum lead
times for warnings

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Effective early warning systems require
Strong support from the government
Coordination among national services for issuance of warnings that take vulnerabilities
and exposure of elements into account
Authoritative and reliable dissemination channel
Community preparedness measures
Feedback mechanism
Good governance, or the proper management of public affairs, includes the protection of the
public from disasters through the implementation of disaster risk reduction policies. Although
natural disasters cannot be prevented, their human, socio-economic and environmental
impacts can and should be minimized through appropriate measures, including early warning
and preparedness. Policy and decision makers at the highest levels have long been expected
to plan for unpredictable but unavoidable crises. Many disaster risk reduction measures
require ongoing attention. While a strong focus is often given to these problems, during or in
the immediate aftermath of disasters, policy makers need to support legislation,
administration, contingency planning and operational procedures including inter-
ministerial/inter-agency relationships, on a permanent basis, in order to effectively reduce the
growing vulnerability of communities and assets.
Public policy for disaster reduction starts with political commitment and high (cabinet) level
authority for the coordination of various national agencies, and ultimate decision-making. It
also depends, however, on authorities and institutions at all other levels and in particular at
the local level for the first and, often most critical, immediate response to a disaster.
Early Warning for disaster reduction is a legitimate matter of public policy at the highest
national levels for two main reasons:
The first one, clearly, is public safety, and the protection of human lives. In the 1970s,
natural disasters alone claimed nearly 3 million lives. By the 1990s, even though the
occurrence of disasters was greater, fatalities had fallen to greater than 800 000. This
shows that it is possible to reduce the loss of life, although the total number of people
affected by disasters did increase markedly.
The second is the protection of the nation’s resource base and productive assets
(Infrastructure and private property or investments) to ensure long-term development and
economic growth. Conversely, by reducing the impact of disasters, a government avoids

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the financial and political burden of massive rehabilitation costs. Again, during the 1990s,
direct economic losses reached an estimated US$629 billion
Investing in early warning and other measures of disaster reduction is neither simple nor
inexpensive, but the benefits of doing so, and the costs of failing to, are considerable. For
instance:
In terms of reducing economic losses, early warning and disaster preparedness ‘pay for
themselves’ many times over the life of the warning system.
The reduction of environmental losses can, if properly managed and publicized, have both
long-term benefits to the economy, and short-term benefits for the administration in-
charge.
A country can strengthen its stature and influence in international relations by a good
handling of ‘externalities’, or indirect effects, on neighboring nations, and by taking a
leading role in the management of common waterways. Coordinated management,
including disaster reduction by thirteen nations
From a public policy viewpoint, early warning, disaster preparedness and prevention must
be part of a single, well integrated process. The decision to act upon receipt of warning
information is political in character. Normally, action resulting from warnings should be
based on previously established disaster management procedures of organizations at
national and local level.
Key Elements of Early Warning Systems
A complete and effective community
based early warning system comprises
four inter-related elements: risk
knowledge, monitoring and warning
service, dissemination and
communication and response capability.
A weakness or failure in any one part
could result in failure of the whole
system.

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Key elements for successful implementation
Understand the most likely threats, likelihood of disasters and their potential
consequences: Although natural disasters are not precisely predictable, they are most often
generally foreseeable. Many natural hazards can be foreseen, or anticipated, from past
experience, the analysis of current patterns of land use, or population distribution.
Policy decisions should be based on a sound assessment of risk. Two elements are essential in
the formulation of risk: the probability of occurrence for a given threat- hazard; and the
degree of susceptibility of the element exposed to that source-vulnerability. The negative
impact, or the disaster, will depend on the characteristics, probability and intensity of the
hazard, as well as the susceptibility of the exposed elements (both people and assets based on
physical, social, economic and environmental conditions).
Establish proper priorities: To allocate scarce resources most wisely, decision makers must
rely on the type of analysis above, and make the disaster management choices which have the
highest ‘value’, in terms of losses avoided. One common approach is to use the expected
value criteria; that is, the likelihood of an event multiplied by the potential cost of this event
if it occurred. Simply stated, it is a matter of giving priority to the ‘worst-most likely’ over
the ‘most benign-least likely’ events. More sophisticated priority criteria can also reflect the
extent to which early warning and preparedness can reduce the impact of likely events.
Developing institutional networks with clear responsibilities. Understanding the nature of
natural hazards and related vulnerabilities, for early warning purposes, requires a
combination of actors from several areas, such as science and research, land use planning,
environment, finance, development, education, health, energy, communications,
transportation, labour and social security as well as national defiance. On the other hand, a
prompt and effective response to a disaster, based on early warning, implies that concerted
action managed by a higher authority be taken by specific types of institutions: civil defiance
or public safety personnel, power and other utility agencies or companies, public health
authorities, etc. at levels ranging from the cabinet minister’s to the community leaders.
The spectrum of collaboration, processes and activities goes from various ways of sharing
information to joint research and integrated databases through to participatory strategic
planning and programming. The latter is the more difficult to achieve, but it is also the more
effective. Some examples of the ways in which this process is realized are:

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• Communication networks/forums for dialogue
• Institutional partnerships vis-à-vis memorandums of agreements between agencies
and organizations
• Formalized joint mandates, legislation, policies and plans within public authorities
• Multi-sector issue advisory groups; multi-disciplinary research projects
• Integrated databases
• Search conferences and
• Other participatory planning processes
Establish or strengthen the legislative/legal framework and mechanisms: Just as for any
other aspect of public policy, early warning systems, as well as other disaster reduction
applications need to be motivated and based within governmental responsibilities, especially
since response to disasters may require exceptional executive powers for a specific period of
time but its success cannot be accomplished without the benefits of widespread decision-
making and the participation of many others. While disaster management and response co-
ordination can benefit from centralized command there is an increasing recognition of the
need to decentralize disaster risk reduction, including early warning system responsibilities.
Developing effective communication strategies: The context of early warning system
communications has two aspects; the hardware aspect relates to the maintenance of lifelines,
i.e. the necessity to build or strengthen robust hazard-resistant communication systems; the
software aspect relates to the maintenance of relationships, i.e. the need to establish and
maintain effective links and working relationships among the actors involved in the early
warning communication chain.
Securing resources: A substantial amount of resources is needed to ensure monitoring,
adequate early warning, concerted disaster reduction, and a return to normal life. To a great
extent, the capacity to secure resources to do this – versus undertaking a competing public
program-depends on the quality and credibility of the overall system: understanding threats,
clear priority setting and institutional networks, and appropriate legislative dialogue. Human
resources are also essential. Capacities and competences in administrations, in particular at
local levels, requires ongoing support.

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Conclusion
Traditionally we are used to managing the natural hazards, but the need for addressing
emerging issues like climate change adaptation, drought, desertification and human induced
hazards in national policies and plans was urgently required. For this purpose effective early
warning system plays a vital role for disaster risk reduction and emergency response
management.
References
Practical Action, Nepal, Early Warning Saving Lives, European Commissions Humanitarian Aid
department, Nepal, 2008.
León, J. C. V and Bogardi, J., ‘Early Warning Systems in the context of Disaster Risk Management’,
entwicklung & ländlicher raum, vol. 2, no. 1, 2006.
FAO/GIEWS, ‘Integrating Early Warning into Disaster Risk Reduction Policies’, Germany, 2003.
Gunasekera, D, 2004: National Disaster Mitigation: Role and Value of Warnings, Outlook
2004, Speaker Papers, Disaster Management Workshop session, Canberra, Australia.