Seeds of Innovation in Hurricane Preparedness, Early Warning, Response, Recovery, Decisions and Timelines

Between 2019 and 2021 alone, hurricanes in the Caribbean and Central America resulted in over 900 deaths and US$7.6 billion in damages, with over 9 million people affected. The increased frequency of major hurricanes in combination with vulnerability and exposure continue to pose the greatest potential for mounting losses under climate change in the region.

The WMO Research Board and Regional Association IV (North America, Central America, and the Caribbean) are seeking to capture successful local innovations in early warning systems and service delivery in the face of increasing hurricane risks. Harvesting these successes for adoption and adaptation around the region, and in similar contexts worldwide, will ensure that local innovations are recognized and built upon to improve early warnings for all.

To start the process, a webinar was hosted by WMO RA IV on 30 August, building an understanding of decision timelines for the 2019-2020 hurricane seasons, with a focus on Hurricane Dorian. More than 100 participants, from a variety of sectors, were divided into groups and asked to share their experiments with different approaches, assessments of successes and failures, gaps in resources and tools, effectiveness of communication channels, perspectives on misinformation, and any other aspects that affect our capacity to provide services to protect life and property when a hurricane is imminent.

A number of key points are to be explored further, including those revealed during the webinar discussions:

Coordination and communication

• Well-documented issues of communication, timing, need to adopt technology improvements, forecast coordination (exists but may vary in real-time operations)
• Understanding and communicating technical information (in different languages and contexts)
• Protocols and drills for action at the regional, national and local levels

Emerging risks

• Continuing and increasing issue of fake news, the need to ensure that the public knows the authoritative and legitimate sources of information.
• Need more effective social media presence of authoritative sources (frequent updates, better visualizations). People told to depend on local sources that may not be able to deliver what the people need, so they rely on external sources.
• Understanding the evolving nature of weather systems and related forecasts of both event characteristics and potential impacts
• Communicating the evolution nature of event characteristics (track changes, speed of movement, intensification or re-intensification over warmer waters, wind distribution, timing of impacts/day vs night)

Community engagement

• Increases community-ownership of plans and the development of capabilities for understanding and communicating risks and what actions to take within communities (a new cadre of trained professionals)
• Changing demographics and at-risk groups (e.g., elderly, differently-abled, transient groups – tourists, migrant workers, immigrant populations who are non-native speakers)

Cascading risks due to changing physical geography

• Identify places at risk to enhance communication and response capacity in those locations, i.e., where buffers have been depleted, including land degradation/hillsides, natural coastal vegetation and sand removal, subsidence, vulnerable infrastructure and networks (water, electricity, transportation, internet)

Governance

• Strengthening decision-making arrangements and clarifying responsibilities among actors at different stages in the decision process
• Stronger partnerships with the private sector AND with civil society and NGOs
• Inter-institutional coordination at the national and the local levels
• Inter-regional and territorial coordination (e.g., quarantine of rescue animals, equipment)

Innovations in governance structures and institutions

• Integrated early warning Information systems-includes but goes beyond communicating the forecast and impact, to increasing community engagement
• National Ministry of Risk (Venezuela)
• Ministry of Risk and Resilience (Ecuador)
• Ministry of Climate Resiliency and Sustainability (Cayman Islands)
• Others

Proactive rather than reactive risk management

• Proactive risk management-responding to an impending (e.g., forecasted) risk or hazard
• Prospective risk management-actions taken to reduce the likelihood of new risks emerging
• Forecast-based financing – for better preparation or increasing lead-time for evacuation where route may be cut off later

Following the successful gathering of experiences from Dorian and other tropical cyclones, in 2024, the Research Board and RA IV plan to hold a structured workshop that focuses on the decision cycle that supports preparedness, early warnings, responses and recovery for hurricanes. The workshop in RA IV will be the first of a series of structure workshops to be held in each WMO Region, with each workshop oriented toward a key weather hazard for each region, with a focus on identifying, understanding and propagating best practices in the early warning value cycle.