Congress also endorsed a package of measures to strengthen early warnings against hazards like floods and tropical cyclones, and to ensure that these become part and parcel of humanitarian operations. It decided to spur work on a Global Multi-hazard Alert System that would pool information from national and regional systems that already exist, or are being planned.
In the past decade, assistance to humanitarian planning and operations has been a rapidly evolving and sought-after service area for WMO. Congress thus launched a drive to develop globally agreed standards and procedures for identifying and cataloguing hazardous weather, climate, water and space weather events.
The absence of global cataloging has hampered the routine characterization and tracking of such events and associated loss and damage. That in turn has made it harder to build a true picture of impacts, which is an essential step towards reining in disaster risk and making countries and communities resilient.
As part of its continuing drive to protect public safety, on 13–14 May WMO co-hosted an international Multi-Hazard Early Warning Conference in Geneva to try to improve warnings for an interlocking range of hazards and to ensure that these warnings reach those who need them most and are translated into effective action on the ground.
