Flash floodsForecast-based financing for flash floods
Forecasts are increasingly used to help reduce the impacts of floods in vulnerable communities. Not all floods are created equal, however. Flash floods are one of the most deadly types on a global scale. While early warning and early action systems for slow-onset floods (from rivers, for example) have improved significantly over the past fifty years, efforts to create a comparable system for flash floods has lagged behind. Forecast-based Financing (FbF) is a mechanism that releases early humanitarian funding based on in-depth forecast information and risk analysis.
Forecasts are increasingly used to help reduce the impacts of floods in vulnerable communities. Not all floods are created equal, however. Flash floods are one of the most deadly types on a global scale. While early warning and early action systems for slow-onset floods (from rivers, for example) have improved significantly over the past fifty years, efforts to create a comparable system for flash floods has lagged behind. Forecast-based Financing (FbF) is a mechanism that releases early humanitarian funding based on in-depth forecast information and risk analysis. In a conversation with State of the Planet’s Francesco Fiondella, Andrew Kruczkiewicz, from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, discusses his work on creating an FbF system for flash floods. He’s presenting at this week’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C.
Francesco Fiondella: Forecast-based financing is a relatively recent innovation. Can you give us a short explanation about what it is and why it’s useful for humanitarian work?
Andrew Kruczkiewicz: Forecast-based Financing (FbF) enables access to humanitarian funding for taking early action based on weather forecast information and socioeconomic risk analysis. The goal of FbF is to trigger targeted action in the time between the issuance of a forecast and when the potential disaster occurs. The overarching goal is to prevent impact and reduce human suffering.
A key element of FbF is that the allocation of financial resources is agreed upon in advance, allowing for contingency plans to be designed and decisions to be outlined well before that stressful period just hours or days before a disaster occurs.
A good example of FbF comes from Bangladesh. Sometimes flooding is so extreme there that a humanitarian response is required. Forecasts are available for these flooding events, but the challenge is identifying when and where we should rely on these forecasts to justify taking early action while the waters are still rising.
Using historical records of extreme floods, we can analyze forecasts before those events to get an idea of how well they performed. Once we do that, we can develop a ‘trigger’, which is a collection of contingencies that need to be satisfied in order for donors to release funds and humanitarian organizations to
