Danish Red Cross

Anticipatory Action

Using forecasts or early warnings, the aim of anticipatory action is to reduce or mitigate the impact of disasters and enhance disaster response actions. Besides saving lives, studies show that investment in anticipatory action saves significant funding and has a positive impact on the targeted communities.

How we work with anticipatory action

With a few exceptions, we have mainly applied anticipatory action to events such as drought and flooding. However, other hazards and the compounding and cascading impacts of the climate crisis may also need to be addressed in this way, so we are exploring how to expand the use in the countries in which we work.

Our ambition is to play a leading role in ensuring that communities can adopt anticipatory approaches:

We aim to empower at-risk communities to protect themselves by providing them with crucial information, resources, guidance, and support before the disaster disrupts their lives and livelihoods.
We provide long-term support to national societies and their local partners, which is focused on developing capacities relating to adopting anticipatory approaches.
Through the actions of national societies and local partners, communities at risk are better prepared to protect themselves, which will spare them from losses and suffering.
Disaster risk management stakeholders also benefit as they can use the specific forecast or warning to focus their early actions on the most at-risk areas while better preparing for the transition to disaster response.