Meteorological services for forecast based early actions in Indonesia

Abstract

The increasing frequency of climate related hazards leading to disasters stipulates the government of Indonesia to pay serious attention to mitigate the adverse impacts of the disasters. An initiative is the utilization of climate and/or weather forecasts to support the installment of impact-based forecasts and risk-based warnings. This study investigated the feasibility of supporting Forecast Based Early Actions (FbA) implementation in Indonesia based on document reviews, identification of supporting tools, and stakeholders’ consultations with the key informants. Understanding the available resources for supporting early actions, the study recommends focusing on two major climate related hazards, i.e., floods and drought, as the two most impacted hazards on human lives and assets with refer to the available datasets from 1972 to 2018. The implementation of FbA for the two hazards also sounds promising with regards to available and accessible forecasted rainfall occurrences and amount (e.g., one day, 3-day and 10-day prediction, and seasonal forecasts) across the country provided by Meteorological, Climatological, and Geophysical Agency named in bahasa Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi, dan Geofisika (BMKG). Nevertheless, the forecast accuracies should still be improved and automatically connected with hazard-based models (e.g., flood or drought) nationally. This demand urges that further efforts are needed to endorse the implementation of FbA in Indonesia.