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

A study of one of the world's longest-running disaster warning systems—desert locust monitoring—finds surveillance limits damages and generates returns of up to 680 times the investment. The new study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research as part of its working papers series, measures how valuable early warning systems could be in limiting the damage caused by natural disasters. Using three decades of data, it evaluates one of the earliest and longest-running disaster monitoring systems: monitoring for the desert locust, one of the world's most destructive agricultural pests.