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Early warning of disasters: Facts and figures
, and what accounts for the gap between warning and action. Through history disasters have destroyed lives and livelihoods, killing people and damaging homes and businesses. Disasters in the past 35 years have taken an estimated 2.5 million lives and cost more than US$1.5 billion, mainly in developing countries. [1] Disasters result from natural and biological hazards (floods or infectious diseases, for example) as well as complex sociopolitical emergencies and industrial hazards (droughts or radioactive leaks). The extent of the damage caused by a hazard is related not just to its severity, but also to the capacity of people living in disaster-prone areas to prepare for and resist it. Efforts to reduce disaster risk have therefore focused, in part, on developing early warning systems to provide timely and effective information that enables people and communities to respond when a disaster hits.