Disclaimer: Below is an excerpt from this week's edition of our newsletter, Predictions, which can be found here.

In the second issue of Predictions, we reviewed a research paper published by Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania which explored making aggregated forecasting platforms more useful to policymakers. We attempted to take the paper’s line of inquiry even further, and ventured to slot forecasting into the policymaking process ourselves. But in light of recent events, we now think it’s wise to both take a step back and get more specific as we think about how to leverage forecasting in high-impact areas.

Late last Friday night, Morocco was hit with a 6.8 magnitude earthquake near Marrakech that has taken nearly 3,000 lives and injured over 5,000. A 4.9 magnitude aftershock followed. Emergency responses have been held up due to geopolitical disagreements and alleged domestic political neglect, only worsening the tragedy. Damages beyond the loss of human life do not yet seem to be calculated.

Over the same weekend, Mediterranean Storm Daniel hit Libya, bringing with it heavy rainfall and flooding that resulted in large-scale destruction. Included in that destruction were two critical dams, which after breaking, led to increased flooding resulting in the loss of homes. As of Wednesday, more than 5,000 have been presumed dead with over 6,000 people still missing.

In a single weekend, nearly 20,000 lives were tragically affected by natural disasters around the Mediterranean Sea. And the rate of natural disasters occuring only seems to be increasing as the climate warms. As forecasters, we believe to our core that at least some of this devastation could have been avoided. Foreseen.

There are two areas of natural disasters where forecasting could be exceedingly useful (that we’ve identified).

Can We Predict Natural Disasters?

First, most obviously, you can try to forecast the actual occurrence of a natural disaster. This is what we’ll call event-based forecasting. And within event-based forecasting for natural disasters, there is a range of success and accuracy.

Predicting weather-related natural disasters seems to be a much more far-along endeavor, likely because weather-related natural disasters are within the scope of general meteorological services i.e. the National Weather Service. For example, hurricane forecasts feed a w...

Posts

Wikitag Contributions

Comments