Preventive Measures

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 requiring 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 peaceful 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.

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 requiring 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 peaceful 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.

Chapter 1 Preventive Measures: An Overview
Part 2 Part I: Structural Indicators and Risk Assessment Models
Chapter 3 A Risk Assessment Model of Ethnopolitical Rebellion
Chapter 4 The State Failure Project: Early Warning Research for U.S. Foreign Policy Planning
Chapter 5 Indicator Development: Issues in Forecasting Conflict Escalation
Chapter 6 Early Warning Indicators of Forced Migration
Part 7 Part II: Dynamic Indicators and Early Warning Models
Chapter 8 Early Warning of Humanitarian Crises: Sequential Models and the Role of Accelerators
Chapter 9 Dynamic Data for Conflict Early Warning
Chapter 10 Cluster Analysis as an Early Warning Technique for the Middle East
Chapter 11 Timely Conflict Risk Assessments and the PANDA Project
Chapter 12 A Pattern Recognition Approach to Conflict Early Warning
Part 13 Part III. Specialized Models and Applications
Chapter 14 Early Warning of Environmentally Caused Conflicts
Chapter 15 An Expert System for Assessing Vulnerability to Instability
Chapter 16 The FUGI Model as a Global Early Warning System for Refugees
Chapter 17 Human Rights Abuses and Arms Trafficking in Central Africa
Chapter 18 FAST: A Pilot Study for an Early Warning System for the Swiss Foreign Ministry
Part 19 Part IV: Public Sector Information and Early Warning Systems
Chapter 20 The Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture
Chapter 21 USAID's Famine Early Warning System
Chapter 22 The Humanitarian Early Warning System: From Concept to Practice
Chapter 23 ReliefWeb: An International Information Management Tool
Chapter 24 The Role of Early Warning in the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
Part 25 Part V. From Early Warning to Early Response
Chapter 26 Towards Response-Oriented Early Warning Analysis
Chapter 27 Information Sharing and Early Warning
Chapter 28 Early Warning: An Action Agenda