Bridging the early warning to action gap requires building resilience at home
When disasters are imminent, timely warnings can be the difference between life and death. However, warnings are only effective when they are received, understood, and acted on.
That is why the theme of the 2026 International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction (IDDRR), “Resilience Starts at Home,” aims to raise awareness of the need to strengthen the physical resilience of homes while ensuring that households have the resources, information, plans and confidence they need to protect themselves.
New findings from the Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll 2026 report, ‘Alert to Agency’, reveal an important gap between receiving an early warning and taking action. Across the countries and territories surveyed, four in five people who had experienced a disaster in the previous five years reported receiving at least one warning beforehand. Yet only 64% of those who received a warning said they were able to take action because of it.
For every 100 people impacted
Pictogram of 100 people impacted by a disaster: about 51 were warned and able to act, 29 were warned but not able to act, and 20 were not warned.
- Warned and able to act: about 51
- Warned but not able to act: 29
- Not warned: 20
Source: Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll (2026)
How people are reached also matters
Among those receiving a warning through one channel, 37% were able to act, rising to 51% among those reached through two channels and 64% among those reached through three.
But communication is only part of the equation.
The findings suggest that what happens next depends in part on the resilience of the household receiving the warning. Preparedness and a sense of personal agency make a substantial difference. Among people who had been impacted by a disaster and received an advance warning, 83% of those with both a household disaster plan and a sense that they could protect themselves or their family were able to take action. That compares with just 27% of people who had neither a preparedness plan nor a sense of personal agency. Having a plan alone was associated with 50% taking action, while having a sense of agency alone was associated with 60%.
Source: Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll (2026)
This 56-percentage-point gap shows that resilience at home is not simply about receiving information. It also depends on whether people are prepared and feel able to act.
Source: Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll (2026)
The World Risk Poll data, available on the Early Warnings for All Dashboard, measures resilience at four levels – individual, household, community and societal – and finds that while global resilience remains unchanged from 2023, Africa saw the largest regional improvements, driven largely by gains in household resilience.
Many of the largest increases in household resilience globally have been recorded in some of Africa’s most populous countries. Between 2021 and 2025, household resilience increased by 13 points in Algeria, nine in Nigeria, eight in Kenya, seven in Egypt and six in Uganda.
The reasons behind these increases are not uniform. Household resilience in the World Risk Poll combines people’s financial assets and ability to meet basic needs, the existence of household plans for a disaster, and access to communications in the form of the internet and mobile phones. Improvements can therefore come through different pathways. One of these is connectivity. Internet access has increased across all four African regions since 2019, potentially strengthening households’ access to early warnings, information, essential services and social support.
Improved connectivity does not automatically create resilience, but it expands access to early warnings and access to risk information. This information enables households to better understand the hazards they can expect, their levels of exposure based on location, and the potential vulnerability of their cities or homes. This full understanding of risk can then influence their decisions on where to live, how to build or reinforce their homes, and what actions to take in response to early warnings.
At the same time, the report makes clear that preparedness is not simply a matter of individual responsibility. The ability to act in response to warnings is influenced by a country's income level. Under half of respondents in low-income (48%) and lower-middle-income (47%) countries said they were able to take action as a result of a warning. This compares to around three-quarters of respondents (71%-75%) in upper-middle and high-income countries.
Governments therefore have a critical role in creating the conditions that enable people to prepare and act. This means investing in reliable and inclusive early warning systems, ensuring that risk information is accessible and actionable, supporting household preparedness and planning, and addressing the financial and practical barriers that can prevent people from taking protective action.
People prepare and act
- Reliable and inclusive early warning systems
- Risk information that is accessible and actionable
- Household preparedness and planning
- Addressing financial and practical barriers
Governments: creating the conditions
As countries work towards the goal of Early Warnings for All, the measure of success cannot be simply whether a warning was sent or received. It must be whether people were able to use it to protect themselves and their families. That is also the message at the heart of the 2026 International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction: resilience starts at home, but it depends on the systems, services and support that make household action possible.