The Global Disaster Preparedness Center (GDPC), a joint initiative of the IFRC and the American Red Cross, commissioned IRMA to produce a global synthesis on inclusive early warning and early action (EWEA) for last-mile communities. The work drew together evidence from 15 research projects in 14 low- and middle-income countries funded under GDPC’s Small Research Grants Program, which focused on people-centered early warning systems for those furthest from services and least reached by conventional preparedness efforts.
Purpose
- Generate a meta-synthesis on how early warning systems can become more inclusive, accessible and actionable for last-mile communities, to inform advocacy and future programming.
- Identify barriers, enablers and promising EWEA practices across diverse contexts, particularly for marginalized groups such as women, people with disabilities, indigenous and traditional communities, informal workers and remote rural populations.
Scope of work
- Analysed 15 GDPC-funded studies on early warning and early action covering topics such as message accessibility, community-developed solutions, policy interventions and resource access for early action.
- Mapped key early warning system features, barriers and enablers across the four EWS pillars (risk knowledge; monitoring and forecasting; communication and dissemination; preparedness and response), with a strong focus on pillars 3 and 4 and an explicit inclusivity lens.
- Identified knowledge gaps and context-specific variations in how “last mile” communities are defined and reached in practice, highlighting implications for design and governance of people-centred EWEA systems.
Methodology
- Applied a rapid scoping review and meta-synthesis approach, relying exclusively on secondary data from the 15 grant reports, with optional targeted recruitment of complementary grey literature.
- Used MaxQDA to carry out pre-coding, lexical searches and structured manual coding of analytical categories, including last-mile qualifiers, hazards, methodologies, EWS features, stakeholders, barriers, enablers and gaps.
- Structured the analysis and final report around EWS pillars and an inclusivity dimension, producing cross-country synthesis, brief illustrative cases and practical, evidence-based recommendations tailored to National Societies and other practitioners.
Process and deliverables
- Delivered an inception phase including preliminary light coding and validation of the analytical framework with GDPC.
- Completed full coding and synthesis of all GDPC studies, supported by a participatory “data party” with key stakeholders to test interpretations and co-create actionable recommendations.
- Produced a comprehensive Synthesis Report on Inclusive Early Warning and Early Action for the Last Mile, accompanied by an executive summary designed for wide dissemination among DRR and humanitarian actors.
IRMA’s team for this assignment included Arielle Tozier de la Poterie, Carlos Villatoro with QA from Lezlie Morinière.
Photo by Esrael Nate on Unsplash.
