Humanitarian Needs Assessment

What assistance do disaster-affected communities need? This book guides humanitarian field staff in answering this vital question during the early days and weeks following a disaster when timely and competent assessment is crucial for enabling informed decision making. Needs assessment is essential for programme planning monitoring and evaluation. In an emergency response however a quick and simple approach to needs assessment may be the only practical possibility – in other words it needs to be ‘good enough’. This guide does not explain every activity needed to carry out an assessment but it describes the assessment process and provides a step-by-step guide through the process. It also contains a number of tools and resources that may be helpful when planning or carrying out humanitarian needs assessments. This guide is essential reading for field staff carrying out assessments after a humanitarian crisis; it should also be read by humanitarian policy makers students lecturers and researchers.