Early Action and Early Warning (Anticipatory Action) Specialist

The Ethiopian Red Cross Society (ERCS) was established in 1935 and is one of the oldest and largest humanitarian organizations in Ethiopia. ERCS provides services to communities affected by natural and manmade disasters through the provision of emergency responses, ambulance and first aid, family reunification, essential drugs, water and sanitation, and other humanitarian services. ERCS also runs disaster risk reduction programs with the aim of creating resilience households and communities. Currently the ERCS has a structure consisting of 15 Regional Offices, Zonal Branches and District/Woreda Branches, Woreda Red Cross Committee and Kebele Red Cross committees.

ERCS also runs disaster risk reduction programs relating to food security, climate change adaptation, livelihood diversification, and institutional capacity building interventions, with the aim of creating resilience households and communities. ERCS works in partnership with the Ethiopian Government, International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC), International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), partnering National Societies, members, volunteers and the communities we serve.

1. Details of the vacant position

• Job Title:        Early Action and Early Warning (Anticipatory Action) Specialist
• Work Unit:  Disaster Preparedness and Response Department
• Reports to:   Disaster Preparedness and Response Division Manager
• Terms of employment: Contract
• Place of Work: Addis Ababa
• Salary:      As per the organizations salary scale

II    Job Summary

Under the supervision of Disaster preparedness and Response department, the EWEA specialist to enhance its capacity in Early Warning and Early Action (EWEA) as part of ERCS anticipatory action initiatives. The specialist will play a critical role in strengthening ERCS’s capabilities in developing, validating, and implementing early warning systems, improving risk analysis, ensuring timely and effective early action interventions and support all anticipatory action and locally-led adaptation projects. This role will also provide management, guidance and technical oversight for the Early Warning System across all and particularly the ongoing Disaster Preparedness projects throughout the project cycle to ensure start up, implementation and close out are in line with ERCS quality principles and standards, donor guidelines and best practices in DRM. The role requires strong technical expertise in disaster risk management and climate science combined with practical field experience in early warning dissemination and community-based climate risk assessment and early action.

Key performance area

1. Provide technical guidance on the development, validation, and operationalization of early warning triggers for different hazards (e.g., drought, epidemics, floods)
2. Work with other technical team members of Government, ERCS, Partner National Societies and IFRC to localize at regional levels the existing early action protocols (EAPs) for floods, drought and epidemics;
3. Dissemination of EAPs, simulation of EAPs, and updating the EAPs aligned to the simulation or activation lessons learnt;
4. Support the integration of meteorological and hydrological data into ERCS’s early warning and early action frameworks;
5. Develop and enhance tools for forecasting and risk assessment tailored to local contexts.
6. Regularly access, analyze forecast information from different sources and provide timely, adequate quality advisories to ERCS senior management, project coordinators and other technical staffs to make the necessary action to reduce the negative impacts of predicted events;
7. Act as a technical focal person for ERCS in early warning and forecasting;
8. Establish effective coordination mechanisms with the Ethiopian Meteorology Institute, EDRMC, other government ministries, departments, and other key stakeholders to ensure data sharing and joint analysis;
9. Actively participate in Early Warning, Early Action related coordination mechanisms including sub technical working groups on AA and sub technical working group on early warning at national level;
10. Work closely with EDRMC and UNOCHA to strengthen national, regional and local disaster risk management system to improve coordination and harmonization of the anticipatory action and early response as such as formation and capacity building of regional anticipatory action technical working groups, and updating Woreda Disaster Risk Profiles;
11. Conduct an assessment on early warning systems with active participation of community members in the targeted regions and woredas and develop a guiding document for dissemination of early warning messages;
12. Strengthen ERCS’s anticipatory action mechanisms, ensuring that early warnings translate into timely and effective community-level actions;
13. Train ERCS staff, volunteers, and community members on forecast interpretation, early action planning, decision-making processes and anticipatory action field level operation;
14. Support the pre-positioning of resources and contingency planning to enable rapid response based on forecasts;
15. Conduct research and analysis on the effectiveness of early warning systems and early action interventions;
16. Explore innovative approaches to improve risk communication and community engagement in early warning dissemination;
17. Document lessons learned and best practices to inform ERCS’s future strategies and contribute to global knowledge sharing on anticipatory action;
18. Provide technical assistance and mentoring to ERCS staff and volunteers on EWEA methodologies & AA initiatives;
19. Design and roll out trainings to ERCS staff and volunteers on anticipatory action;
20. Design and roll out trainings to anticipatory action technical working groups at national and regional levels on anticipatory action and also on multi-hazard contingency planning;
21. Design and roll out trainings to the woreda and kebele level ready groups on early warning systems;
22. Foster partnerships with national and international organizations working in anticipatory action, climate resilience, and disaster risk management;
23. Perform other duties when requested by his/her line manager.

Qualification Requirements:

Second/First in: Disaster Risk Management, Project Management, GIS, Statistics, Information technology, Climate/Environmental Science and related fields.

Experience

• Minimum 7/9 years related work experience.