Other agencies and NGOs are working on similar projects. As for governmental interest in early warning, France so far is the only western country with a separate Department of Humanitarian Affairs, an executive agency concerned almost entirely with the forecasting and mitigation of famine, civil war, and refugee movements. Increasingly, computers are being employed to improve early warning capabilities. Software, currently in development in several academic institutions, can read reports from journalists on the ground, searching for the frequency of keywords that may indicate rising ethno-political tensions. But there are still several limitations.
Computers can only narrow the scope of inquiry for early warning organizations.
After filtering out particularly low-risk regions, further analyses and forecasting would be required. In addition, software to monitor press reports can, for the time being, function in only a few languages, including English, French, German, and Spanish. A number of arguments have been raised questioning the feasibility of early warning. With resources for foreign assistance shrinking in most donor countries, devising new early-warning structures may seem unrealistic. It is not a question of a shortage of information.