Lecture

Community-based Early Warning System

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Description

This lecture presents a case study of a community-based early warning system implemented in the Terai region, focusing on engaging communities in risk analysis, building community-centered systems, and enhancing capacity for disaster risk reduction. The system, tested during the 2013 floods, successfully provided advanced warnings, enabling safe evacuation and protection of livelihoods. Challenges such as sustainability, scaling up, and gender inclusivity are discussed, emphasizing the importance of community engagement, human capital, and evidence-based advocacy to prioritize disaster risk reduction initiatives.

In MOOC

A Resilient Future: Science and Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction

This course aims to introduce participants to existing and emerging technologies suitable for disaster risk reduction while promoting the overall aim of sustainable development. The course focuses on three main natural hazards- floods, landslides and earthquakes. It also discusses the challenges and limits of adapting and adopting technologies depending on context (Global North and Global South) with examples from Switzerland, Nepal, Colombia, Philippines and other countries.

Official source

Related concepts (10)

Community engagement

Community engagement is involvement and participation in an organization for the welfare of the community. Volunteers actions, which involves giving personal time to projects in humanitarian NGOs or religious groups, are forms of community involvement. The engagement is generally motivated by values and ideals of social justice Community engagement can be volunteering at food banks, homeless shelters, emergency assistance programs, neighborhood cleanup programs, etc.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a social goal for people to co-exist on Earth over a long time. Specific definitions of this term are disputed and have varied with literature, context, and time. Experts often describe sustainability as having three dimensions (or pillars): environmental, economic, and social, and many publications emphasize the environmental dimension. In everyday use, sustainability often focuses on countering major environmental problems, including climate change, loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services, land degradation, and air and water pollution.

Community organizing

Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other or share some common problem come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest. Unlike those who promote more-consensual community building, community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless. Community organizing has as a core goal the generation of durable power for an organization representing the community, allowing it to influence key decision-makers on a range of issues over time.

Community development

The United Nations defines community development as "a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems." It is a broad concept, applied to the practices of civic leaders, activists, involved citizens, and professionals to improve various aspects of communities, typically aiming to build stronger and more resilient local communities.

Sustainability measurement

Sustainability measurement is a set of frameworks or indicators to measure how sustainable something is. This includes processes, products, services and businesses. Sustainability is difficult to quantify. It may even be impossible to measure. To measure sustainability, the indicators consider environmental, social and economic domains. The metrics are still evolving. They include indicators, benchmarks and audits. They include sustainability standards and certification systems like Fairtrade and Organic.

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