Disaster early warning systems: people, politics and economics

This paper is a product of the Third International Conference on Early Warning (EWC III), held in Bonn, Germany from 27-29 March 2006, from the People, Politics and Economics session. The session addressed how to link scientific and technical knowledge and capabilities with organizational systems and structures, and with communities at risk. This paper summarizes the outcome of the dicussion on this topic, and in particular the challenges faced in faciliating such inter-linkages.

A Scientific and Technical Symposium formed part of the conference programme and ran for most of the three days. It comprised three sessions: multi-hazard approaches, mega-events, and people, politics and economics. A number of papers were presented and discussed in each session, and reports were presented to the conference's Plenary Session. The conference proceedings are at http://www.ewc3.org.