Assessing Monitoring and Early Warning Systems for Food Security Risk

For the last 40 years, international organizations have invested into early warning systems (EWSs) for food crises. Despite today s era of digitalization and big data, current EWSs fall short of informing at-risk populations about food crises. To understand how the dimensions of vulnerability and hazard determine food security risk, we first develop a framework of an optimal EWS based on UNISDR s people-centred EWS. Second, we analyze the main international EWSs for food security risk, i.e. the Integrated Phase Classification, the Famine Early Warning System Network, the Vulnerability Assessment and Mapping, and the Global Information Early Warning System with regard to their information content, monitoring characteristics and communication strategies, and link these to their response capacity. We show that EWS monitor a variety of indicators, covering the availability and accessibility components of food security. Even though EWSs could expand their country coverage and spatial detail, we find that information on accessibility indicators is missing for multiple countries, particularly for those involved in complex emergencies. Furthermore, none of the EWS examined provide real-time information, as they fail to integrate communication technologies and the internet as source for bottom-up information and communities at risk, both as an information source and recipient of warnings. Acknowledgement : The authors thank Kieran Munelly, Heike Baum ller, Matthias Amling and Omar Abdi for useful discussions. Davide Pesenti and Kieran Munelly provided excellent research assistance.