The IASC Humanitarian Early Warning Service (HEWSweb) is an inter-agency partnership project aimed at establishing a common platform for humanitarian early warnings and forecasts for natural hazards. The main objective of HEWSweb is to bring together and make accessible in a simple manner the most credible early warning information available at the global level from multiple specialized institutions.
The HEWSweb concept has been initially proposed by a subsidiary body of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (the IASC Sub-Working Group on Preparedness) and endorsed by the IASC-WG in September 2004. The service has been developed by the World Food Programme and its technical staff on behalf of the IASC, building on inputs from all IASC partners.
The HEWSweb service has dedicated pages for each type of hazard (see top navigation bar). This includes dedicated pages for floods, storms, locust, volcanoes, earthquakes, weather and other hazards.
HEWSweb is based and depends fundamentally on the early warning information currently made available worldwide through a variety of specialized agencies and institutions. IASC partners include WFP, UNICEF, UNDP, OCHA, ICRC, IFRC, UNHCR, WHO, FAO, WMO, IOM, SCHR. Partnerships with external, non-UN specialized institutions and sources have been or are being established. Among others, this includes the following institutions:
HEWSweb is a service of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee and its members and it is intended as a free service for the benefit of the wider humanitarian community. HEWsweb will be under the overall purview of the IASC SWG on Preparedness and Contingency Planning which will manage it on behalf of the IASC. The United Nations World Food Programme will be responsible for coordinating and managing the overall information content, design, and organization of HEWSweb on behalf of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee and its members.