Early locust warning systems are key to minimizing natural disasters, returning up to 680 times investment

A study of one of the world’s oldest disaster warning systems – locust monitoring – finds that monitoring limits damage and generates returns up to 680 times greater than the investment. The new study, released by the National Bureau of Economic Research as part of its working paper series, measures the usefulness of early warning systems in limiting damage from natural disasters. Using three decades of data, it evaluates one of the oldest and longest-running disaster monitoring systems: monitoring of the desert locust, one of the world’s most destructive agricultural pests.