Early Warning Systems Defined - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 100

Even in places with full access to and use of the latest technology, from real-
time satellite monitoring to Internet-connected handheld electronic devices, people
use many information sources to create their own warning information and action
contexts and decisions. Rumours from neighbours and relatives can be trusted
more than offi cial bulletins. For instance, experience from Australian fl oods indi-
cates the high percentage of people receiving warnings through informal sources
(Handmer 2000 ). Similarly, people might accept and trust warning-related infor-
mation, but be unwilling to act on it for sensible reasons, as described earlier for
Bangladesh. As also described earlier, Bangladesh is nonetheless improving in
connecting cyclone warning and response systems to day-to-day life. Similarly,
Wisner et al. ( 2004 ) explain how some Central American locations could connect
water management improvement with a fl ood EWS, embedding the EWS in the
community's daily life.
Such operational suggestions for EWS as a social process provide the basis for
pursuing the long-term warning system process, integrating EWS and sustainability
endeavours, so that EWS become part of, and continually serve, the community,
rather than systems waiting to be triggered externally only when a hazard
manifests.
In fact, it is important to go beyond people-centredness for EWS in order to
include community-centredness. That is not to say that the community always rep-
resents every individual. As per the discussion earlier, all communities are hetero-
geneous. Instead, the point is to recognise that the EWS processes operate at
multiple time and space scales and that individuals are rarely separable from their
community contexts, even when they are marginalised within that community.

5.4 Conclusion

All EWSs seem to work perfectly on paper and in presentations, where the ideal
situation (what ought to be) can be assumed without problem. Reality proves differ-
ent, as many factors chip away at the ideal formulation and execution of an EWS.
Aside from the social, including political, barriers interfering with successful EWS
and creating vulnerabilities, such as for Zimbabwe, the nature of some hazards
makes full EWS implementation challenging. The 1998 tsunami in Papua New
Guinea suggests that perhaps the only feasible EWS solution is to not live along
coastlines where the earthquake-to-inundation time is less than the time required to
reach a safe location. If that solution were implemented, then it would devastate the
livelihoods and cultures of many coastal and island peoples.
An example of how thoroughly an EWS can become mired in politics is the 6
April 2009 L'Aquila earthquake in Italy which killed over 300 people. Six Italian
scientists and an Italian civil servant were tried for manslaughter for the warning
information that they disseminated just prior to the main shock. They were con-
victed in October 2012, although appeals are likely. Much of the media reported the