Can we use forecasts to prepare for disasters?

How do we use forecasts for action?

The key is having tools for local experts to reconcile forecast triggers for humanitarian action with government datasets and crowdsourced farmer information.

It is difficult to use forecasts to act in preparation before a disaster. Its tricky to figure out how to use a forecast to take preventative action before a disaster strikes. Not only is it hard to coordinate the massive efforts between governments and international agencies, but forecasts can have errors–which one should be used, and for what actions should it be used?

Coordination is challenging. Major players all need to be on the same page when making big plans based on uncertain information. If international players do not coordinate to follow the lead of the national governments’ ministries, actions can be counterproductive. Coordinating and building trust in the solutions across entities is critical.

Planning is complex. Each player has a large set of elaborate actions, timelines (and budgets) to quickly there to protect large numbers people on the ground. These must be coordinated for a range of potential scenarios. Then, these workplans need to linked to the forecast itself, all while taking into account the uncertainty in the forecast.

Different actions require different forecasts. It is not one size fits all–different actions require different forecasts, and different timelines. For example, in a drought, planning a water storage program may require more months of lead time than a food program, and each will have different consequences if a disaster is not forecast, or if the forecasted disaster doesnt come.

Quantitative and intuitive understanding required for problem solving. People need to be provided adequate intuition to come up with innovative solutions and the quantitative information to inform design decisions.

New tools and workflows are starting to make this possible. We have been working with WFP, do build capacity within countries to operationalize Early Warning Systems with Forecasts for anticipatory humanitarian aid. There have been a lot of exciting breakthroughs recently.

The past can teach us about how to use forecasts in the future. Although we know the future will be different than the past, we must build upon our experiences and knowledge. Therefore a key strategy is to look at the past, to teach us how to use forecasts for the future.

Reconcile historical information. First, farmer crowdsourced experiences are reconciled in workshops where players interact through design/data analysis tools, working with the humanitarian historical records of disasters and actions taken.

Reconcile plans to address historical events. Then, the stakeholders build and integrate what plans they would have wanted to be in place.

Evaluate what the forecast would have been for historical events to determine if it is good enough for an action Once people have agreement on what disasters happened in the past, and the actions that they would have wanted to take to prepare for them, they can see what the forecast would have been, and see what would have happened if they followed the forecast. They can discuss if they would have acted correctly, failed to act, or acted in vain in key years, and compare different forecasts from different sources and different technologies. You can check out the tool to do this for drought in Niger.

WFP is working with us to make breakthroughs in several countries right now. You can see another drought example by clicking on Ethiopia, and can check out the Ethiopia Forecast Tool Guide, loging in as User: FBF and password IRI. Note that the tools are being advanced quickly, so the documentation does not always reflect the current tool.

Locally developed gridded rainfall products. The historical rainfall data in both of these tools is from the gridded merged satellite and raingauge locally generated products through IRI tools such as ENACTS, because its very often the case that national or regional meteorolgical services have much higher quality data than is available through global products.

Forecast tools For actions to be triggered off of forecasts, someone needs to be generating the forecast operationally. And, in the action analysis it may turn out that the available forecasts must be further improved or potentially that new forecast alternatives are necessary. For example, when looking at the impacts of drought, it may be that a forecast of the time that the rainfall season starts is more useful than the total amount of rain during the agricultural season. Scientists need to research these new forecasts, inspired by the decisionmakers, and working closely with the decision makers. IRI offers NextGen CPT forecast tools to allow national or regional met offices do this research, and then provide the forecasts operationally into the future. For the tools shown, NextGen CPT forecast tools were used to generate the forecasts in the maps, and are currently being used to research and develop improved forecasts.

Building forecast triggers into action Developing triggers on forecasts is not useful unless it is built into coordinated National and International action for operationalization. In order to do this, the tools directly connect to the timelines, action plans, and budget contingencies for anticipatory action of the different players, so that triggers and actions are united into a single plan, that can be triggered once the forecast is made. If you click on the Ghant it button in the tool shared, you can play with this yourself, but you may need to set up your own login to do that (just follow the instructions in the tool).