Why a report on EWEA visualizations?
REAP was set up in 2020 to focus on building bridges across communities of practice. These efforts towards increased collaboration highlighted the need to clarify the constituent elements of the EWEA value chain across communities.
This paper is a contribution to the Partnership’s collective effort to ‘identify missing links in value chains for early warning-early action and to connect and strengthen existing initiatives where possible.’ (REAP Strategic Vision).
To this end, the REAP Partnership convened a small group of experts to better comprehend how different organisations conceptualize the linkages across EWEA components. These expert contributors came from NGOs, media, academia, meteorology services, regional bodies, donors and UN agencies. They were asked about (1) designing a standard ‘value chain’ for EWEA and (2) the appropriate consultative process for such an exercise.
Who is this report for?
The main audiences for this compendium are primarily – but not limited to – the (regional and global) intergovernmental and nongovernmental bodies providing technical expertise and financial support to nationally-mandated authorities.
It also aims to provide guidance to other national entities responsible for the overall coordination and implementation of EWEA, including the Office of the Prime Minister, the National Disaster Management Agency, NGOs, and other EWEA stakeholders. By framing EWEA as a holistic value chain that impacts different actors, it aims to support national institutions on EWEA decision-making, legislation and planning.
What does the report say?
This compendium presents a sample of visualizations from across the broad spectrum of early warning and early action actors. It aims to reflect the diversity of approaches, highlighting in the process how these visualizations are influenced by the mandates and priorities of the organisations that produced them. Based on how different actors work across the early warning-to-early action chain and long debates among the group of experts convened for this process, the report organizes the visualizations according to three general categories: early warning visualizations (Section 1), principally from the fields of DRR and hydrometeorology experts, early action visualizations (Section 2) focused on the delivery of early actions, primarily from a humanitarian concern for avoiding or at least reducing the impacts of extreme weather events; and visualizations on stakeholder collaboration (Section 3).
In its conclusion, the report provides a summary infographic that visually represents 74 (often overlapping) elements that these ten illustrative visualizations identify for early warning and early action systems. The report also provides recommendations for future EWEA research, which can help to further strengthen the connections across sectors and EWEA areas of expertise.
Access the compendium here.