Humanitarian Intelligence

A Practitioner's Guide to Crisis Analysis and Project Design

By (author) Andrej Zwitter

Paperback - £30.00

Publication date:

05 July 2018

Length of book:

248 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781786609465

Humanitarian aid workers are faced with many challenges, from possible terrorist attacks to dealing with difficult stakeholders and securing operational space free from violence. To do their work properly and safely, they need effective intelligence. Humanitarian intelligence refers to the use of investigative and analytical techniques in service of rapid and continuous assessment, project and program development, impact evaluation, and learning. It focuses just as much on how to use early warning indicators to assess risks, evaluate trends, and write early warning analyses as it does provide guidance on the operational design of humanitarian relief efforts. Further, operational security depends on the intelligence analysis. Unlike governments, NGOs’ resources are very limited. Humanitarian intelligence officers hardly have any literature detailing useful current standards and important tools for their analysis needs. Humanitarian Intelligence is the first to provide an overview and a practical guide to the tools and methods of data gathering and assessment, standards of measurement in humanitarian action, interpretation strategies, and operational planning tools. Short hypothetical cases and practical examples illustrate and explain the tools detailed in each chapter.

Additional resources including case studies and teaching tools are available online at http://humanitarianintelligence.net .
Today humanitarian actors are having to respond faster, stay longer, and constantly find creative solutions to overcoming challenges. Central to meeting the needs of millions of people everyday is the ability of the humanitarian system to gather, interpret and manage information. Humanitarian Intelligence elevates the vital role that intelligence analysis plays in the humanitarian sector. Most importantly, leaders and practitioners alike now have a working framework they can easily and immediately incorporate in their next relief operation.