Overview

During a humanitarian crisis a large number of assessments and surveys are carried out, often in support of project design as well as monitoring and evaluation. These activities are as diverse as IDP registration, nutrition assessments, demining surveys, etc.

This page is to support practitioners in conducting quality and coordinated needs assessments. This includes information on:

• The IASC Operational Guidance for Coordinated Assessments in Humanitarian Crises (Operational Guidance)
   
• Key humanitarian Indicators and guidance on how to collect them (Indicators and Guidance)
   
• The Humanitarian Dashboard and guidance on how to compile and use it (Humanitarian Dashboard)
   
• Commonly used tools and guidance in the practice of needs assessments (Toolbox)
   
• NATF developed needs assessment training (Training and Capacity Development)
   
• Preparedness for coordinated assessments (Preparedness)
   
• Recently conducted assessments (Recent Assessments)

Coordinated Assessments

Experience has shown that there are significant benefits to coordinating needs assessments and that doing so can help save more lives and restore more people’s livelihoods. The Needs Assessment Task Force (NATF) was established by the IASC in March 2009, in order to improve coordinated assessment processes.

To provide a vision on how to conduct coordinated needs assessments , the NATF has produced an Operational Guidance for Coordinated Assessments in Humanitarian Crises. (create a link here) The NATF commissioned this guidance to help realize the goal of better quality and more timely assessments through coordinated processes. The Guidance establishes a common understanding of how to plan and coordinate joint assessments in different phases of an emergency. The Guidance has been developed based primarily on experiences during early phases of large-scale quick-onset natural disasters, but is also applicable to other types of crises.

A package of tools to support the implementation of the Operational Guidance has also been produced. These tools include:

• Key Humanitarian Indicators and guidance on how to collect them: Key humanitarian indicators have been identified by global clusters and are available for use by country teams to create a composite and ongoing picture of the humanitarian situation for the benefit of the Humanitarian Coordinator and the Humanitarian Country Team. The Key Indicators are available here.
   
• Humanitarian Dashboard and guidance on how to use it: The Humanitarian Dashboard is a tool and process for consolidating and presenting humanitarian information at the sectoral and multi-sectoral level.  It presents needs, gaps and coverage over the course of an emergency and allows clusters to monitor coverage against benchmarks. The Humanitarian Dashboard is available here.
   
•  Web-based Toolbox. The toolbox makes important inter-cluster and cluster needs assessment tools available for use in the field. The toolbox contains Cluster-endosed tools which are of particular use in supporting clusters in harmonizing their data collection. It also contains NATF tools to support the coordination of assessments across clusters/sectors.