The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) recently (20 October) released a landmark report Early Warnings for All in Focus: Hazard Monitoring and Forecasting.
Launched by the UN Secretary-General, the Early Warnings for All (EW4All) initiative sets an ambitious goal: by 2027, every person on Earth will be protected by life-saving, multi-hazard early warning systems. This report – Early Warnings for All in Focus: Hazard Monitoring and Forecasting – presents how that vision is being turned into concrete progress under Pillar 2 of the Initiative, led by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The report conveys a number of key messages:
- Public safety and economic well-being are threatened by more extreme weather
- Early Warnings for All initiative makes big progress but gaps remain
Grounded in country-led priorities and powered by global partnerships, the report takes a deep dive into the systems that make early warnings possible – from observing networks and data exchange to forecasting, impact-based warnings, and governance.
Notably from a CODATA perspective, when discussing “Standardizing hazardous event impact data to enable impact-based warnings” the report observes: “Globally, only a small share of Members (13%) report having comprehensive hazard impact datasets to support Impact Based Forecasting (IBF), while 11% have partial datasets and more than one third lack such data entirely. This shortage of impact information is a persistent challenge across all regions, limiting the ability of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) to tailor forecasts to societal risks. To address this gap, WMO developed the Cataloguing o Hazardous Weather, Climate, Water and Related Environmental Events (WMO-CHE) initiative, providing a standardized, scalable methodology for systematically documenting events and linking them with impact data. WMO-CHE ensures that hazardous events are uniquely recorded with essential details, supports harmonization of global datasets, and fosters closer collaboration between NMHSs and national disaster management agencies.
“The Catalogue contributes to wider United Nations efforts, including the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)–International Science Council (ISC) hazardous events tracking system and Hazard Information Profiles, strengthening global consistency in hazard monitoring and loss and damage reporting.”
CODATA is currently working with UNDRR and the European Commission’s JRC to publish the Hazard Information Profiles as a machine-actionable FAIR vocabulary, following current good practice and the recommendations made in ‘10 Simple Rules for Making a Vocabulary FAIR’. This process is set to be completed before the end of 2025.