Title
Rethinking Early Warning Systems. Beyond Sirens and Sensors
Record Type
Video
URL
https://youtu.be/CfToYnUSmpg
Contact
Jair Torres
Year
2,022
Publisher
Imara IHG

Summary
Jair Torres (UNDRR) explains that effective early warning systems must move beyond technology to integrate governance, social behavior, and risk knowledge. Using earthquake case studies, he illustrates how people-centered, multi-hazard approaches address systemic risks and cascading disasters.
Description
In this guest lecture, Jair Torres, international consultant for the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and UNDP, examines the evolving role of multi-hazard early warning systems in a world shaped by climate change, systemic risk, and compound disasters.
Moving beyond a purely technical view of early warning, this session explains why effective systems must integrate risk knowledge, governance, communication, social behavior, and policy alignment. Using earthquakes as a detailed case study, the lecture illustrates how early warning works in practice—and why technology alone is never enough.

Key themes include:
* How risk is changing in the 21st century (climate change, pandemics, systemic risk)
* Why disasters are not “natural,” but socially constructed
* The four core elements of effective early warning systems
* Multi-hazard approaches and cascading risk
* Earthquake early warning: science, limits, and real-world applications
* Public and private sector uses (transportation, infrastructure, industry)
* Governance, policy integration, and cross-sector coordination
* Lessons from COVID-19, Tonga, Japan, Haiti, and the Caribbean

This lecture is part of a graduate-level course in Crisis and Disaster Management and is designed for students, practitioners, policymakers, emergency managers, and humanitarian professionals seeking to better understand how early warning systems reduce disaster risk—when they are people-centered and policy-enabled.