New report from the Anticipation Hub shows that anticipatory action reached 9.6 million people in 2025
The Anticipation Hub has published its fourth annual overview of the scale of anticipatory action worldwide.
The report shows that this approach continued to expand in 2025, reaching millions of people ahead of forecast hazards. According to Anticipatory Action in 2025: A Global Overview, anticipatory action frameworks were activated 146 times, and in 54 countries, during the year, with almost 120 million US dollars released to support those actions. These activations reached 9.6 million people, with many more people being covered by early warnings.
The report draws on data provided by the organizations that implement this approach. This provides evidence that anticipatory action continued to increase in scale during 2025. A key indicator for this growth is the rise in the number of active frameworks, the pre-agreed arrangements that enable humanitarians to act before a hazard strikes. These increased by 70 per cent, from 154 in 2024 to 262 in 2025. The majority of these are for floods, droughts and tropical storms (cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons), with Bangladesh having the highest number of frameworks in place for different hazards, followed by the Philippines, Nepal, Guatemala and Pakistan.
“Anticipatory action is no longer a niche innovation. The challenge now is scaling the systems and financing the local capacities needed to act before disasters become crises.”
Building and fuelling anticipatory action
For the first time in this series, the report tracks how anticipatory action is being funded, showing how donors are allocating both ‘fuel’ funding – the resources used to support the actions taken ahead of a hazard – and ‘build’ funding, which is used to develop the systems and infrastructure needed for this approach to function. Among the donors who provided data, Germany and the European Union emerged as the largest contributors to date.
Other highlights in the report show that:
- cash and voucher assistance, early warnings and health-related activities were the types of actions most frequently delivered
- a further 205 frameworks were being developed during 2025, across 71 countries
- 57 countries are working on institutionalizing anticipatory action and incorporating this approach into their disaster risk management systems.
Dr Nikolas Scherer, joint head of the Anticipation Hub and one of the report’s authors, noted: “The figures in this report show that anticipatory action is no longer a small-scale innovation. In 2025, it helped millions of people to act before the impacts of hazards fully unfolded. It is also very encouraging to see more countries working on institutionalizing anticipatory action.”
The report was launched on 28 May at the secretariat of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). "Anticipatory action is no longer a niche innovation," agreed Jagan Chapagain, chief executive officer and secretary general at the IFRC, during the launch event. "The challenge now is scaling the systems and financing the local capacities needed to act before disasters become crises.”
"The figures show tremendous progress," added Stefanie Lux, joint head of the Anticipation Hub. “For me, what's important is that behind each number is a family who was able to take actions that protected themselves and their livelihoods from the worst impacts of impending extreme events.”