How can early warning systems be improved? This introductory chapter from ‘Preventive Measures: Building Risk Assessment and Crisis Early Warning Systems’ argues that the complexity of issues involved in early intervention and preventive diplomacy is such that no single organisation or sector is either capable of, or motivated for, effective action in isolation. Thus, collaboration between warners and responders must be facilitated through better communication in both directions.
The goal of early warning is proactive engagement in the earlier stages of potential conflicts or crises, to prevent or at least alleviate their more destructive expressions. This requires developing and testing reliable early warning instruments and building close collaborative links between early warning researchers, practitioners, government agencies, international organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
The common assumption that early warning has been mastered needs to be reassessed. A review of early warning systems reveals some persistent problems:
- Early attempts at collaborative early warning relied on information and computing technologies that were often primitive. The models used were complex and analyses were abstract. This yielded projections that were difficult to interpret in the context of policy constraints and other inputs available to public sector policy analysts.
- There is a cultural divide between public and private sectors and between analysts on the one hand and desk officers and policymakers on the other. The changing role of the military offers a potential opportunity for greater collaboration. With a greater interest in operations other than wars (OOTWs) there is a growing emphasis on being able to anticipate potential hotspots.
- The question of how best to combine the different interpretive and model-based early warning systems needs to be addressed. Current systems tend to rely on conventional interpretative analyses and are primarily linked to public sector agencies. Structural and/or dynamic early warning models could be adapted for real-time application given the necessary funding.
Early warning work ultimately aims to create conditions under which it is possible for the international community to launch initiatives that prevent humanitarian crises. In the interim however, there are a number of ways of improving current early warning systems:
- In order to bridge the cultural divide between public and private sectors, the United States administration should create a programme for regular inter-agency consultation. This should include researchers and other private sector early warning analysis. Researchers should be prepared to argue the long-term benefits of early warning and should be careful not to overstate their ability to anticipate crises.
- Every effort should be made, independently of any government initiative, to institutionalise exchanges among public and private sector agencies concerned with early warning and early response.
- An open ‘super-system’ framework for regular exchanges of information and sharing of resources across sectors should be established. It should make use of the internet, regular face to face consultations, and collaborative partnerships. The system should be managed by the private sector with core funding from foundations and/or corporations to minimise government policy constraints.
- Priorities for future development should include both retrospective and real-time pilot applications of existing model-based systems to evaluate the comparative strengths of different data sources, models, and analytical and interpretative approaches.
