Integrated elements of early warning systems to enhance disaster resilience in the Arab region

Al Hmoudi, A; El, R; Aziz, ZUH

Abstract

The Arab region’s coastal zones are of immense importance. Almost all Arab countries need to build up resilience for vulnerable communities and carry out proactive planning for integrated coastal zone management and development of early warning systems for vulnerable coastal areas. It is clear that through the analysis of past natural disasters, the links between the four elements (risk knowledge, monitoring and warning service, dissemination and communication, response capability) of EWS are weak, leading to a reduced effectiveness of the system. The focus is on the development of technology more than on members of the community at risk. There is also weakness in institutional cooperation and one of the main challenges is in early warning. This problem has encouraged the researcher to propose a guideline for early warning of natural disasters and increase its effectiveness by involving members of the community and improving institutional cooperation between stakeholders. The objective of this paper is to identify and assess some of the main areas vulnerable to sea level rise in the Arab world. A survey of case studies in the UAE (United Arab Emirates) and Egypt is undertaken. The main objectives are to identify vulnerabilities from coastal flooding, assess adaptation measures and point out the urgent need to build up institutional and human capacities in response to the problem. identify gaps, points of strength and points of weakness in early warning and discuss options for adaptation and the need for implementing major elements of the EWS.

Citation

Al Hmoudi, A., El, R., & Aziz, Z. (2015). Integrated elements of early warning systems to enhance disaster resilience in the Arab region. Journal of geodesy and geomatics engineering, 2, 73-81. https://doi.org/10.17265/2332-8223/2015.06.002

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Sep 4, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 26, 2020
• Journal: Journal of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering
• Print ISSN: 2332-8223
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2
• Pages: 73-81
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17265/2332-8223/2015.06.002
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.17265/2332-8223/2015.06.002
• Related Public URLs: http://www.jourinfo.com/Journals/JGGE.html