Impact-Based Forecasting for Cyclones and Coastal Flooding — Samoa's AI-Assisted Early Warning System

Samoa is exposed to cyclones, coastal flooding and storm surge, and its national meteorological service previously issued hazard-only forecasts rather than forecasts of likely impacts on people, infrastructure and livelihoods.

Under the US$4.8 million CREWS Pacific SIDS 2.0 project, implemented by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) with the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the World Bank's Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), Samoa's Meteorology Division aimed to move from hazard-only forecasting to impact-based forecasting.

Training and system rollout across Samoa, Tonga, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu made the new forecast methodology operational in Samoa and Tonga by September 2023 (with a training workshop for Samoa and Tonga Meteorological Services personnel held 18-22 September 2023 in Nadi, Fiji), covering coastal flooding, tropical cyclones, swell waves, rainfall and tsunami hazards. The regional project supported 14 Pacific Island Countries and Territories in total and concluded in June 2025 despite disruptions including COVID-19 and the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcanic eruption.

In March 2026 the World Bank approved further financing under the PREPARE-Samoa project to extend multi-hazard early warning coverage to protect an estimated 180,000 Samoans, around 80% of the country's population, building directly on the impact-forecasting foundation already in place. An earlier phase of the same broader early-warning effort was projected to benefit around 135,000 people across Samoa and Tonga combined.

Public reporting to date documents operational deployment, training completion and financing scale-up, but does not yet include an independent evaluation of forecast-accuracy gains or lives and damage averted: the evidence base is strong on reach and sustained multilateral financing, but has a genuine gap on published outcome evaluation.