Early Warning Systems Defined - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 92

development. That lesson needs to be transferred to EWS for sudden-onset hazards
to move away from traditional approaches focusing on only the immediate hazard
and emergency response into EWS which incorporate training, community building,
baseline data collection, and livelihood support over the long term—irrespective of
the time scale of any given hazard. If that were achieved for sudden-onset hazards,
then lessons can be transferred back to the creeping hazards to try to reduce the
impacts of the creeping hazards long before the thresholds are crossed.
Given that EWS must effectively serve multiple audiences in multiple ways, cov-
ering different time scales, what approaches can be used to achieve that?

5.2 Approaches for EWS

5.2.1 Characteristics

Box 5.4 The Fundamental Tenet of an EWS

A fundamental tenet suggested for EWS is that the information that it provides,
either in the context of a hazard manifesting or long before that, should
address the fi ve Ws and one H: what, when, where, who, why, and how:

• What is happening with respect to the hazard(s) and vulnerability/vulner-
abilities of concern?
• When are impacts likely?
• Where are the locations at risk?
• Who is at risk?
• Why is this a threat, i.e. why are there vulnerabilities?
• How can the EWS be effective—not just for the specifi c hazard manifest-
ing, but also as a long-term social process?

Each question within the fundamental tenet of an EWS is diffi cult to answer for any
given context. Answering them collectively and completely is unlikely to be feasi-
ble for any specifi c EWS. Nonetheless, it is possible to move forward with concep-
tualising and designing an EWS, recognising the information that ought to be
available ideally, even if some of the answers are fuzzy in reality. Consequently,
from an operational perspective, characteristics of an EWS converge on the follow-
ing (e.g. Gruntfest et al. 1978 ; Gruntfest and Ripps 2000 ; Lewis 1999 ; Mileti et al.
1999 ; Wisner et al. 2004 , 2012 ):

Continuity : An EWS must operate continually, even though the hazard of concern
may occur only intermittently or rarely. With EWS as a social process embedded