Quality Criteria for The Evaluation of Climate-Informed Early Warning Systems for Infectious Diseases

This guidance outlines key technical and operational criteria related to the performance, application, implementation, and effectiveness of climate-informed Early Warning Systems (EWS) for health. It illustrates how an understanding of these issues can be used for the evaluation of EWS for multiple infectious disease outbreaks.

Specifically, this guide provides a set of essential evaluation criteria related to key components, design, and application of climate informed EWS, with a focus on aspects related to the indicators used, statistical performance, operational aspects, and communication, as well as the cost-effectiveness of EWS.

These guidelines show users how to evaluate the performance of existing EWS and support the decision-making phases for the implementation process. Tools that are under development can also benefit from the design and recommendations proposed in this guide to achieve effective climate informed EWS.

Intended users

National authorities of infectious disease programmes and health information systems of ministries of health.