Preventive Measures Building Risk Assessment and Crisis Early Warning Systems

by Davies, John L.; Ahmed, Adeel; Baechler, Günther; Bond, Doug; Brecke, Peter; Chen, Robert S.; Cockell, John G.; Dmitrichev, Andrei; Esty, Daniel C.; Gerner, Deborah J.; Goldstone, Jack; Gurr, Ted Robert; Harff, Barbara; Hiltermann, Joost R.; Jefferson, Ch

• ISBN13: 9780847688746
• ISBN10: 0847688747
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-09-03
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

State failure, ethnopolitical war, genocide, famine, and refugee flows are variants of a type of complex political and humanitarian crisis, exemplified during the 1990s in places like Somalia, Bosnia, Liberia, and Afghanistan. The international consequences of such crises are profound, often threatening regional security and requiting major inputs of humanitarian assistance. They also may pose long-term and costly challenges of rebuilding shattered governments and societies. A vital policy question is whether failures can be diagnosed far enough in advance to facilitate effective international efforts at prevention or peacful transformation. This volume of original essays examines crisis early warning factors at different levels, in different settings, and judges their effectiveness according to various models. Top contributors offer answers along with analyses as they move from early warning to early response in their policy recommendations.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Preventive Measures: An Overview	p. 1
Structural Indicators and Risk Assessment Models
A Risk Assessment Model of Ethnopolitical Rebellion	p. 15
The State Failure Project: Early Warning Research for U.S. Foreign Policy Planning	p. 27
Indicator Development: Issues in Forecasting Conflict Escalation	p. 39
Early Warning Indicators of Forced Migration	p. 56
Dynamic Indicators and Early Warning Models
Early Warning of Humanitarian Crises: Sequential Models and the Role of Accelerators	p. 70
Dynamic Data for Conflict Early Warning	p. 79
Cluster Analysis as an Early Warning Technique for the Middle East	p. 95
Timely Conflict Risk Assessment and the PANDA Project	p. 108
A Pattern Recognition Approach to Conflict Early Warning	p. 121
Specialized Models and Applications
Early Warning of Environmentally Caused Conflicts	p. 131
An Expert System for Assessing Vulnerability to Instability	p. 142
The FUGI Model as a Global Early Warning System for Refugees	p. 159
Human Rights Abuses and Arms Trafficking in Central Africa	p. 174
FAST: A Pilot Study for an Early Warning System for the Swiss Foreign Ministry	p. 181
Public Sector Information and Early Warning Systems
The Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture	p. 185
USAID's Famine Early Warning System	p. 194
The Humanitarian Early Warning System: From Concept to Practice	p. 203
ReliefWeb: An International Information Management Tool	p. 212
The Role of Early Warning in the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees	p. 219
From Early Warning to Early Response
Toward Response-Oriented Early Warning Analysis	p. 230
Information Sharing and Early Warning	p. 241
Early Warning: An Action Agenda	p. 248
References	p. 255
List of Open Access Early Warning Projects	p. 267
Index	p. 281
About the Contributors	p. 287
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