Detection and warning for under-monitored hazards
Extreme heat, wildfires, volcanic eruptions and solar storms have been highlighted as hazards requiring greater investment. Some of these, and other emerging hazards such as biological hazards, may sit outside the scope of national hydrometeorological networks, yet need to be monitored. Experience from Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Iceland, Algeria, Sri Lanka and the Brazilian Amazon point to innovative solutions for monitoring hazards which, historically, have neither been regularly monitored nor forecast. Many of these cases also show that warning capabilities for these hazards need not depend on building dedicated observation networks from scratch. They can instead come from integrating signals that already exist, for example, by building affordable instruments locally or using locally recorded observations, including those informed by Indigenous knowledge.
In the absence of local networks, global and regional observations can be useful substitutes. Despite its location in the Afar Rift in Ethiopia – one of the world’s most tectonically active continental rifts – there was no local monitoring network, no formal early warning protocol and no integrated hazard forecasting system in place for the Hayli Gubbi volcano when it erupted on 23 November 2025. After the event, a multidisciplinary team reconstructed the eruption timeline and demonstrated how integrating data from a range of sources combined with atmospheric dispersion modelling could have provided actionable warning information ranging from several weeks to hours before the eruption. The analysis was carried out using only open-access data and open-source tools, demonstrating that early warnings for some under-monitored hazards need not depend on, or wait for, new or dedicated monitoring; rather, they can be developed by integrating signals that are already being measured.
The logic of producing new products with existing capacities extends from detection to forecasting. Extreme heat is an intensifying risk across the Sahel, but NHMS in West Africa are accustomed to producing seasonal rainfall forecasting, treating heat as an unremarkable feature of the climate rather than a hazard requiring warning. In Burkina Faso, working with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and the Met Office under the Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa programme, the NMHS developed heat warning services without new observing infrastructure. Using the Objective Seasonal Outlook Package, forecasters in Burkina Faso generated locally relevant, tailored, seasonal heat forecasts from global data sets, adding a seasonal heat forecasting layer that was previously absent from the national early warning architecture. National stakeholders built on this new capacity through a national co-production workshop that turned the seasonal outlook into agreed key messages, communication strategies and a jointly selected set of early actions. Because the toolkit is open-source, forecasters can continue to generate and adapt outlooks without dependence on proprietary systems.
Detection gaps can also be closed with comparatively inexpensive, locally built technology. The Centre for Development of Advanced Technologies in Algeria developed a fixed LIDAR (light detection and ranging) system that detects wildfire smoke plumes at ranges of up to 30 km, with planned extension to 100 km. The prototype was assessed as costing roughly a third of comparable imported systems while offering superior detection and the Centre had plans to deploy it in wildfire-prone areas.
Hazards can also be detected by combining different data sets. For example, one of the first early action protocols in the world for dengue, developed by the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society with the National Dengue Control Unit, pairs routine clinical surveillance data with rainfall to enable action in the two-to-four-week gap between heavy rainfall and rising cases. An agreement with the health ministry secured access to the official epidemiological data needed to run the protocol.
Where no instrument observes the hazard, communities can partially fill the gap. In the Yanomami, Javari Valley and Munduruku Indigenous territories of Brazil, there are no conventional networks or tools to monitor the threats that matter most to communities: illegal mining and invasions, water contamination, fires, malaria and malnutrition. Using the ECHO-supported communication and training, Indigenous people now generate their own georeferenced alerts with photographs, video and audio.