Forecasting hazards, averting disasters

6.1   The costs of anticipatory action

6.1.1   The cost of acting in vain

Responding to a crisis before it has fully materialised 

brings with it the increased risk of acting in vain. The 

cost can be high. Many interventions that might be 

considered as part of an SOP will bring benefits regardless 

of whether the crisis occurs or not. From this perspective, 

investment is highly likely to be cost-effective regardless 

of the accuracy of the forecast. Equally, some early action 

activities can have very high costs, for example evacuation 

of a large population. It is also important to consider the 

opportunity cost of any investment, as triggering funding 

for an extreme event that does not occur will divert funds 

away from another crisis, and thus limit the scope for 

early response elsewhere. Nonetheless, it is generally felt 

that a false early response is more than offset by the cost 

of a late response. DFID’s Economics of Early Response 

and Disaster Resilience study (see Box 4) found that, ‘for 

every early response to a correctly forecast crisis, early 

responses could be made 2–6 times to crises that do not 

materialise, before the cost of a single late response is met’.

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