EWS Young Professionals Network

“When I started this job, my boss sent me to the hydrological forecasting department for a couple of months. This was funny because I am a sociologist! Now I understand that, in order to see the whole picture and create relevant people-centered EWSs, we need to work with all types of backgrounds! From my experience, once you adopt an interdisciplinary approach, you can’t go back! This is the future.”

“Technologically, we are able to do it. We are able to provide the science. We have the computational power. We have the global forecasts at reasonable resolutions. They are not perfect but we are able to do them. The big problem is the translation of that information into actual actionable decisions at local scales. I think that gap is still massive.”

“I think one of the challenges is to bring new ideas to the existing system. It is not only about how to convince people, but also how to show the value of new opportunities, new data, new techniques. It’s sometimes difficult to bring changes to existing systems and I think this can be an important role for the young professionals: to make a connection that helps to bridge the gap between existing systems and new opportunities that might better fit the operational reality of the field.”

“In our department we are trying to hire a young professional with a social science background – a sociologist or someone focused on risk communication. If we aspire to create a good impact-based forecast and warning system that triggers appropriate responses from citizens during emergencies, hydrologists and forecasters can’t be the only professionals in the team!”