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PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Commun.
Sec. Disaster Communications
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1451800
This article is part of the Research Topic Cross-Boundary Disaster Communication: Building Systems Thinking and Breaking Traditional Divisions in the Field View all articles

Bridging Gaps in Research and Practice for Early Warning Systems: New Datasets for Public Response

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 University College London, London, England, United Kingdom
  • 2 International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure, London, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Early warning systems (EWSs) are essential for disaster and crisis response, applicable across a wide range of hazards and threats. They are increasingly recognised as pivotal in cross-disciplinary contexts, where diverse expertise is required to manage cascading, compound, and interconnected risks holistically. Despite their critical role, significant gaps persist in understanding the interplay between the technical, social, and organisational elements that underpin effective systems. Drawing on insights from the literature and our work on global datasets, such as the World Risk Poll, this comment paper highlights four key areas: (1) leveraging public behaviours and responses to enhance warning effectiveness; (2) understanding the role of trust in information sources and its influence on warning reception; (3) identifying limitations in existing analyses; and (4) addressing operational challenges such as data accessibility and harmonisation. We propose a coherent approach that utilises multi-country surveys to establish a common benchmark for addressing these issues, identifying shared patterns across diverse geographies, and improving the management of complex events and cross-border crises. This benchmarking effort could reveal actionable insights into regional drivers of EWS effectiveness, ultimately fostering greater international cooperation and advancing the socio-technical integration of disaster risk knowledge into operational resilience.

    Keywords: Public alerting, Early Warning Systems, Public warning, Disaster Management, crisis management

    Received: 19 Jun 2024; Accepted: 06 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Pescaroli, Dryhurst and Karagiannis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Gianluca Pescaroli, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, England, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.