Early warning systems in climate risk management: Roles and implementations in eradicating barriers and overcoming challenges

Early Warning Systems (EWS) are essential tools for alleviating the effects of natural hazards, particularly floods, cyclones, and droughts, by giving early warnings and actionable information. Currently, there is a lack of common standards, detailed guidelines, and a clear understanding of how EWS operates in challenging environments, making it difficult to evaluate their efficacy. However, various human and social factors often compromise their efficacy. Barriers resulting from human behavior, social systems, and cultural settings could hinder the dissemination, comprehension, and response to early warnings. To assist decision-makers in identifying optimal risk mitigation measures and EWS mechanisms, the current study intends to determine their roles and overcome implementation barriers and challenges associated with EWS. The current study primarily considered 669 articles, selecting 37 relevant ones through 4 steps: identification, screening, eligibility, and inclusion, based on the PRISMA framework for data extraction and review. The study findings include several human and social factors as barriers to EWS such as socio-cultural constraints, political instabilities, communication challenges, insufficient technology, inadequate finance, lack of community involvement, and so on. The review shows how community-based EWSs provide power-driven warnings to societies in disaster-prone vulnerable regions, primarily floods, droughts, and tropical cyclones. This paper discusses Bangladesh's EWS success story, elucidating climate risk management techniques and their roles in floods, cyclones, and droughts. The most significant gap is the lack of suitable equipment for monitoring hazards, making predictions, and spreading EWS. Overall, the outcomes of this study have profound implications across social, environmental, and financial sectors, which strengthen disaster risk reduction initiatives, influence policy and technical advancements, and support local, national, and global resilience. These insights derived from this research will eventually enhance community safety, preparedness, and sustainability.