About this Research Topic
Over the past decades, disasters have increased in scope and scale. With technical ability in and capacity for implementing early warning systems increasing, gaps remain related to moving from availability of potentially useful data to operationalizing action prior to disaster occurrence. In addition, with various types of disasters increasing in magnitude, frequency and geographic extent, the chance for interacting with other disasters (both climate and non-climate driven) increases, leading to emerging challenges for implementation and governance of early warning and anticipatory action systems. Fortunately, various aspects of anticipatory action are improving, such as integration of Earth observations and the development of structured financial mechanisms. However, significant additional progress is needed, particularly in the geophysical/climate prediction side, validation, governance, and in understanding of appropriate financial mechanisms and macroeconomic behavior. Best practices and opportunities for engagement within climate services, links with adaptation and mitigation strategies and across various sectors in private industry are also lacking, while demand for those continues to increase.
As we move towards streamlining processes to develop climate services that facilitate and provide the baseline for anticipatory action to take place, we must learn from the climate services and anticipatory action literature and lessons learned. This article collection not only provides the space for examples of climate services enabling anticipatory action, but also the space to share challenges and critiques. It will also focus on the development, monitoring and evaluation, and subsequent potential revision and/or updating anticipatory action related services, policies and protocols. Research, policy and practice across disciplines and sectors is a priority, especially within the Earth Observation, machine learning contexts and cognitive sciences. Attention should include relevance to global processes such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the UNFCCC Paris Agreement.
We welcome manuscripts on the below related themes:
- Characterization of enabling climate and non-climate related environments for anticipatory action.
- Integration of Earth observations into anticipatory action programming and policy development.
- Development of governance structures for sustainable and nationally and locally operated climate services.
- Demonstrating how transdisciplinary research has been and can be incentivized to improve development of anticipatory action programs and policies, and related climate services.
- Prioritization and de-prioritization techniques of anticipatory action driven by environmental justice.
- Macroeconomic response to anticipatory action activation.
- Statistical methods for evaluation of predictability of anticipatory action, particularly false alarm metrics.
- Enhancing understanding of appropriateness for development of multi-hazard and compound hazard anticipatory action.
- Data fusion and integration of multiple geophysical and non-geophysical data sets to enable anticipatory action, specifically including exposure data
- Case studies on anticipatory action in complex environments, including conflict, migration, displacement and post-conflict settings.
- Perception of trust of climate services related to dissemination and use of prognostic information.
Keywords: climate services, informed action, climate action, perception, climate data, anticipatory action, UNFCCC Paris Agreement, SDGs
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
