Humanitarian Needs Assessment : The Good Enough Guide

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.