“The Locals will Know”: The Role of Local Actors and Local Knowledge in Trigger Development for Anticipatory Action

Anticipatory (Humanitarian) Action (AA) seeks to mitigate the humanitarian impact of predictable extreme events by implementing humanitarian measures before the impact fully materializes. Despite growing interest in AA, trigger development – where accurate thresholds or rules for decision-making for early action are identified based on forecasts and predictive analysis – remains a key challenge. Therefore, many current AA frameworks are still dominated by international actors, who rely heavily on quantitative data and scientific forecasting models, which require considerable resources and technical expertise to be developed and monitored. These trigger models often come at the expense of incorporating local insights and provide few entry points for small and medium-sized organizations. Similarly, existing literature largely highlights the technical complexity of creating reliable trigger models, often sidelining the valuable input that local actors – those closest to the communities at risk – can provide.

Against this background, the paper seeks to provide recommendations for the systematic integration of local actors and local knowledge into the process of trigger development, thus lowering technical entry barriers for joint engagement in AA by German humanitarian NGOs and their local partners. It does so by drawing on a comprehensive literature review, key informant interviews with AA practitioners, field observations, and participation in workshops and other dialogue formats. The key results confirm that local leadership favors the design of flexible, cost-effective, and context-sensitive triggers. Centering decision-making power around local actors, from trigger design to monitoring and activation, ensures that existing local resources and structures are leveraged, that trigger models are aligned with broader disaster risk reduction (DRR) and development agendas, and that early buy-in from local governmental and non-governmental actors enhances the prospects of institutionalizing trigger models beyond the narrow timeframe of humanitarian projects.

Local knowledge, such as Indigenous early warning signs or insights into informal coping strategies and local vulnerabilities, adds further value by enhancing the precision and community acceptance of trigger models, ultimately making them more sustainable and aligned with local capacities. In particular, the use of participatory methods, like the People-First Impact Method (P-FIM) or community-based monitoring of hazard variables, leverages local knowledge to ensure that thresholds for action are better tailored to local contexts. In light of these findings, flexible, multi-step triggers that combine both quantitative data (e.g., meteorological forecasts) and qualitative assessments (e.g., local expert committees) emerge as an actionable and adaptable approach to joint trigger development among German NGOs and their local partners, providing greater flexibility across different hazards and contexts, including non-weather-related crises.

The case study of locally led trigger development in Catanduanes, Philippines, illustrates some of these practices in action, highlighting the practical benefits of locally led trigger development. In this context, local actors, including civil society organizations and disaster risk reduction offices at various government levels, played a central role in the participatory design process of a flexible, two-step trigger model for typhoon-related disasters. By integrating local knowledge and community-based approaches into trigger monitoring, the model enhanced community ownership and trust in the AA framework. This example demonstrates how local actors can lead the development of sustainable, context-sensitive triggers that align with broader disaster risk reduction efforts, effectively enabling joint engagement of NGOs and local partner organizations. However, the findings also underscore the importance of political commitment to AA at all government levels and a favorable institutional setup to support the entire process, from early warning information gathering to trigger activation.

Schneider, S. (2024) ““The Locals will Know”: The Role of Local Actors and Local Knowledge in Trigger Development for Anticipatory Action.” IFHV Working Paper, 14(2).

Download here.