Community-based early warning systems and household climate adaptation in East Africa: a mixed-methods evaluation of local forecast access, trust, and protective action

Community-based early warning systems in East Africa have widened forecast dissemination without resolving why access seldom converts into household protection. Drawing on usability, diffusion and collective-action reasoning, the framework proposes that source credibility, intelligibility of lead-time and compatibility with fuel, water-pumping and productive energy constraints jointly condition whether warnings reshape behaviour. The proposed protocol integrates household survey modules, deliberative group discussions and institutional mapping across contrasting agro-ecological and infrastructural settings in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, without claiming completed fieldwork. Its bounded contribution is a transferable set of constructs, measures and comparison logics that would permit identification of where the forecast-to-action chain breaks and why. Clarifying those break points offers a basis for redesigning advisories, delivery channels and energy-contingent contingency support so that warnings become actionable within material household realities.