July: an early warning system appears for South Asia

The opening of the International Disaster Early Warning Conference in Bonn (Germany) yesterday confirmed: an early warning system for South Asia will appear in July this year.

The earthquake on the east coast of Sumatra on December 26, 2004, followed by a tsunami, and a series of regional earthquakes in March this year claimed 223,492 people in 12 countries, causing damage more than 10 billion USD.

UN Special Envoy on Disaster Recovery Bill Clinton said the early warning system (EWS) will save many people's lives, and call on all parties to promote the establishment of this system. However, he stressed: " The complex and sophisticated EWS system will be meaningless if the signal cannot reach a community guided by how to protect yourself when listening to sirens ."

The Bonn conference emphasized that the transition from speech to action would include: making a list of responses, illustrating with a number of practices to support residents living in risk areas (including actions from grants) national to community and civilians on risk assessment and performance testing; catalog all early warning projects to select the most effective projects at a later Conference; Scientific studies of this system will also be conducted in parallel to present at a Scientific and Technical Workshop to find the optimal warning methods.

On this basis, a " Global Study of an Early Warning System " prepared at the request of the United Nations Central Committee, was delivered to the conference. Accordingly, the EWS is not a controlled system from the center, but a network of systems based on the technological and professional capabilities of different socio-economic regions.

To be effective, the EWS must target people and must coordinate four elements: knowledge of the dangers people face, service of warning and technical supervision, and dissemination of warnings for those who live in Risk and cognitive regions as well as improvisational availability of communities living in this risk area. The study emphasizes: "The failure of any of these four factors leads to system failure."

This study is compiled on the basis of data collected from 122 countries.

TRAN DUC THANH ( IPS, AFP, CNA )