Disaster Management and Emergency Planning

Student activity instructions:

1. First, go through the slides "Project monitoring and evaluation in humanitarian relief".
2. Then read the article "Assessing the impact of humanitarian assistance in the health sector".
3. Then post your contribution to the discussion forum on the topic of monitoring and evaluation.
4. You can test your understanding of this topic via the "Topic 4 Quiz".
5. For further reading, do read the excellent review "Measuring the impact of humanitarian aid" that looks at the effects of aid.

Recommended resources

1. Disasters: The public health impact (Slides 1-18) The presentation from the Epidemiology Supercourse begins with a summary of the public health impact of disasters, e.g. on morbidity and mortality, on health care infrastructure. Then it goes into listing the epidemiological methods to be used before, during, and after the disasters (to identify the need and to measure the health impact) and the challenges for epidemiologists.
2. Health services assessment checklist (Appendices 1-3, pp 47-55) The checklist is to be used during a disaster to measure the impact on health services. In order to measure the impact on mortality and morbidity, surveillance forms and various mortality and morbidity rates can be used.
3. Needs assessment data collection The techniques mentioned on the website also apply to baseline and rapid disaster assessment.
4. Basic Health Needs Assessment  The SPHERE project provides this overview of the process.
5. Disaster Emergency Needs Assessment  The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies provide this useful guide to disaster emergency needs assessment.
6. Evaluation of humanitarian action (training course manual) and slide presentations. 'An introduction to the evaluation of humanitarian action' is a comprehensive manual which details how to conduct an effective evaluation of the humanitarian action. Although the whole document is very useful, the most relevant sections are listed below:

• What is evaluation: pg7
• Monitoring, evaluation, audit: pg13
• Evaluation criteria: pp40-41
• Evaluation terms: pp107-110
• Data collection methods: pp58-59
• Evaluation types: pp111-112
• Assessing the quality of humanitarian evaluations: pp92-103

Additional reading

1. ReliefWeb The ReliefWeb is an on-line gateway to information on humanitarian emergencies and disasters; it disseminates timely, reliable and relevant humanitarian information and is administered by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Maps and situation reports are useful as a starting point for health needs and impact assessments before embarking on primary data collection.
2. Lessons Papers-ALNAP Learning from past humanitarian action operations.