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  Anticipatory action

Anticipate, prepare, recover

Advances in weather forecasting and climate science now enable us to act before hazards strike rather than investing primarily in humanitarian response after disasters happen. These anticipatory approaches enable more people to receive needed assistance ahead of predictable shocks.

Anticipatory action saves lives and limits the impacts of disasters and is a hallmark of the Climate Centre mission. Specifically, our work on anticipatory action builds on a long-standing element in the Climate Centre’s work: assisting the mainstreaming of the early warning early action into Red Cross Red Crescent disaster management worldwide. 

Our team is comprised of meteorologists, social scientists, hydrologists, and humanitarian experts, and our expertise notably lies in anticipatory action including forecast-based financing (FbF), a concept developed by the Climate Centre and German Red Cross in the early 2000s.

Based on forecast information and risk analysis, FbF ensures the timely release of humanitarian funding for agreed activities in preparation for a hazard. 

We support the advancement of anticipatory action and FbF in many ways. We are centrally involved in the development of forecast-based financing programmes worldwide and provide ongoing technical support to National Societies and their partners working on these concepts.

In addition to the development of such mechanisms, we also spearhead advocacy efforts, capacity building and research and innovation on all aspects of anticipatory action. 

The Anticipation Hub
Platform

The Anticipation Hub

The Anticipation Hub aims to share knowledge and experiences on anticipatory humanitarian action to collaboratively scale up efforts in different countries, for different hazards by a range of users. It is a platform for learning from experience, for building partnerships, for fostering coordination, and for the development and diffusion of new ideas. It will achieve these goals by connecting stakeholders and facilitating exchange and learning between individuals, governments, policy-makers, the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, NGOs, UN agencies, researchers and other actors interested in anticipatory humanitarian action.

Go there

Impact-based forecasting

This guide outlines the steps and tools needed to develop impact-based forecasting: from understanding risk to producing, issuing and verifying impact-based forecasts and warnings as fit for purpose.

Designed with and for people working in impact-based forecasting, early warning and early action, the information and recommendations will be useful for everyone from technical staff in national hydrological and meteorological services to disaster risk management, humanitarian and development agencies.

What can go wrong?

FbF doesn’t inherently have a higher chance of “going wrong” than much of our other work. But because it is new, people might not realize potential pitfalls. Here we outline several ways in which FbF can go wrong – some are inevitable, and some can be avoided.

Let’s create a fake country – let’s call it Madeupsville, where FbF has taken off, and is widely implemented by everyone. However, in Madeupsville, people are starting to run into a few problems…

Training

Climate Training Kit: early warning early action

This training module includes a range of presentations, tasks and exercises to be used to learn at your own pace of when teaching this topic.

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Climate Training Kit: early warning early action
Video

Impact-based forecasting explained