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Around the world, extreme weather events are becoming increasingly "the new normal" and are expected to increase in the 21st century as a result of climate change. Extreme weather events have devastating impacts on human lives and national economies. This book examines ways to protect people from hazards using early warning systems, and includes contributions from experts from four different continents representing 14 different universities, 8 government agencies and two UN agencies. Chapters detail critical components of early warning systems, ways to identify vulnerable communities, predict hazards and deliver information. Unique satellite images illustrate the transnational impact of disasters, while case studies provide detailed examples of warning systems. With contributors from the fields of economics, ethics, meteorology, geography and biology, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in disaster risk reduction or climate change

Abstract. Landslide early warning systems (EWSs) have to be implemented in areas with large risk for populations or infrastructures when classical structural remediation measures cannot be set up. This paper aims to gather experiences of existing landslide EWSs, with a special focus on practical requirements (e.g., alarm threshold values have to take into account the smallest detectable signal levels of deployed sensors before being established) and specific issues when dealing with system implementations. Within the framework of the SafeLand European project, a questionnaire was sent to about one-hundred institutions in charge of landslide management. Finally, we interpreted answers from experts belonging to 14 operational units related to 23 monitored landslides. Although no standard requirements exist for designing and operating EWSs, this review highlights some key elements, such as the importance of pre-investigation work, the redundancy and robustness of monitoring systems, the establishment of different scenarios adapted to gradual increasing of alert levels, and the necessity of confidence and trust between local populations and scientists. Moreover, it also confirms the need to improve our capabilities for failure forecasting, monitoring techniques and integration of water processes into landslide conceptual models.

The Financial Crisis in the late 1990s and the ongoing crisis have showed the importance of creating an early warning system (EWS) to lessen economic, political, and foreign policy fallout. Surprisingly, the EWS literature rarely considers the role of political institutions to detect economic dangers that can be harbingers of conflict. Controlling for common explanations in the literature, we use panel data for fifty developing countries from 1987 to 2004 to investigate the effect of political determinants for predicting economic crises. Although most political variables appear to have little influence in forecasting defaults or currency crises, models specified with bond ratings from the credit rating agencies can be helpful for predicting the onset of crisis. Our research is a first step toward gaining insights into how best to anticipate crisis that may prove beneficial particularly in light of the current global crisis. Adapted from the source document.