The last decade has seen a major innovation within disaster risk management through the emergence of standardized forecast-based action and financing protocols. Given sufficient lead time and forecast skill, a portion of relief funds may be shifted from disaster recovery to disaster preparedness, reducing losses in lives and property. While short-term early warnings systems are commonplace, forecasts at the monthly or seasonal scale are relatively underused, despite their potential value. Incorporating both, numerous relief organizations have developed operational early action protocols for natural hazards. These plans may have well-defined forecasts, trigger criteria, and identification of early actions ranging from weeks to months prior to a predicted disaster, but many have not been explicitly optimized to maximize financial or utilitarian returns. This study investigates the effect o...

Globally, the direct cost of natural disasters stands in the hundreds of billions of USD per year, at a time when water resources are under increasing stress and variability. Much of this burden rests on low- and middle-income countries that, despite their relative lack of wealth, exhibit considerable vulnerability such that losses measurably impact GDP. Within these countries, a growing middle class retains much of its wealth in property that may be increasingly exposed, while the few assets the poor may possess are often highly exposed. Vulnerability to extreme events is thus heterogeneous at both the global and subnational level. Moreover, the distribution and predictability of extreme events is also heterogeneous. Disaster managers and relief organizations are increasingly consulting operational climate information services as a way to mitigate the risks of extreme events, but approp...