As you've probably noticed, we've just made some changes to ReliefWeb’s design and usability. These changes are designed to help you more easily navigate through ReliefWeb and are based on the feedback you provided in our recent user survey.
For many years, users have been telling us that they love the filters. However, you've also been telling us that their usability and functionality could be...
At ReliefWeb, your feedback, ideas and suggestions are very important to us. They are what have helped ReliefWeb become such an important tool for the humanitarian community. We’re always exploring new ways to deliver humanitarian information, but we can’t do it without your input.
To ensure that ReliefWeb best meets the information needs of humanitarians, we’ve decided to undertake some research...
Earlier this year we officially launched the ReliefWeb API (v.1.0). The API allows web developers and tech-savvy humanitarians access to over 17 years’ worth of carefully selected and curated humanitarian content stored in the ReliefWeb database.
For all our non-technical humanitarian users, API is short for “application programming interface”, and it enables websites, software, and apps to talk...
Every year on 19 August, the global humanitarian community commemorates World Humanitarian Day. It is a day to recognize all humanitarian aid workers who face danger and adversity in order to help others. It also commemorates all people who have lost their lives in humanitarian service.
On 19 August 2003, 22 aid workers were killed in a bombing at the UN office in Baghdad.
This year’s commemoration...
Hundreds of natural disasters occur each year. According to UNOCHA’s World Humanitarian Data and Trends, natural disasters affected more than 124.5 million people worldwide in 2012. Having access to timely and relevant information is key for humanitarians to be prepared and effective in response.
At ReliefWeb, we aim to provide timely disaster information that is useful and relevant to the...
Last year, we posted a blog discussing the editorial process behind ReliefWeb’s natural disaster coverage. The blog outlined how our editors monitor and gather information from a variety of reliable sources in order to provide you with timely and comprehensive disaster updates.
One of our key sources of disaster information are National Disaster Management Authorities (NDMA). During our daily...
Are you developing innovative online products for humanitarians? Do you want to incorporate ReliefWeb content and data in your website or online application? Then the new ReliefWeb API may be just what you’re looking for.
It’s been eight months since we released the initial version of the API to a small number of interested developers. We were encouraged by the interest and feedback, but we also...
** UPDATE Please note the ReliefWeb Content Trends is not available anymore. More about our decommissioned projects here
Over the past 17 years ReliefWeb has collected and stored more than 545,000 pieces of humanitarian information, diligently tagging them with taxonomy for crises and disasters, content type, sources, themes and vulnerable groups. This bank of structured information provides a...
Over the past 17 years, more than 5,000 humanitarian organizations have supplied ReliefWeb with 540,000 pieces of humanitarian related information.
So to help you easily find what you’re looking for, from within our vast humanitarian information archive, we've created a new section called ‘organizations’. Now you can choose to find humanitarian information by either updates, countries, disasters,...
In October 2013, ReliefWeb and OCHA ran a survey to understand the data needs and perceptions of the humanitarian community. Almost 3,500 people responded, with the majority based in Africa and working for an NGO.
The survey found that ReliefWeb users regularly do analysis with humanitarian data, but the data is hard to find, difficult to compare and not always trustworthy or timely.
To address...
2013 was a busy year for ReliefWeb’s team and servers.
We experienced a 25% growth in site usage, Published over 43,000 humanitarian updates including: Over 39,000 situation reports, analyses, assessments, press releases, manuals, evaluations and appeals Over 4,000 maps and infographics In March, we reached the amazing milestone of having published over 500,000 humanitarian reports since 1996...
2013 has been a big year for ReliefWeb! We collected and published over 42,000 humanitarian updates and launched many new initiatives such as Topics pages, the ReliefWeb mobile site and APIs. There were over 11.8 million visits during the year and we reached the amazing milestone of publishing 500,000 reports and maps since our launch in 1996. But that’s now in the past! So looking forward in...
By the end of November ReliefWeb had reached 11,000,000 visits for 2013. This is a new record and it looks like we are well on our way to making 12,000,000 for the year. That is approximately 1 million per month. We’re really pleased that the humanitarian community is visiting ReliefWeb and utilising the features and services on offer. At the end of December we’ll publish a full rundown of site...
** PLEASE NOTE some of these topic pages are not maintained anymore. See recent topic pages
Our Topics categories just keep growing! Since the launch of Topics pages in August over 16,000 visitors have searched for humanitarian information by various topics. This week we’ve added Protection & Human Rights, Disaster Management, Mine Action, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding to the list of topic...
** PLEASE NOTE some topic pages are not maintained anymore. See recent topic pages
A couple of months ago we set up a labs project that created Topics pages for disaster types (e.g. floods, storms, etc). We presented users with a prototype ‘Floods’ page and sought feedback on the content, design, layout and functionality. After receiving a great response from users and taking on board some of your...
Portable, easy to use and great for email, work, reading, video and social media, tablet devices are fast becoming a humanitarian’s must-have tool. According to our site analytics, approximately 4% of visits to the site are made using tablet devices. We wanted to know more about how our users interact with their tablet devices, so we conducted a survey in August. We also wanted to find out what...
“Every year on August 19th we mark World Humanitarian Day in honour of aid workers, who have lost their lives in the line of duty. We commemorate their sacrifice and reaffirm our commitment to the lifesaving work that humanitarians carry out around the world every day, often in difficult and dangerous circumstances, where others cannot or do not want to go.” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Today is...
After many hours of development, programming, reviewing content, tagging information, seeking feedback and creating exciting new functionality, we are proud to graduate our Topics pages from concept to a full-fledged feature of ReliefWeb. Now users are able to search for humanitarian information by either latest update, countries, disasters or topics.
You can easily find the topics pages by using...
** PLEASE NOTE some topic pages are not maintained anymore. See recent topic pages
Last month we launched the beta version of our new topics pages as mentioned in our previous blog post. We've had a great response from the Reliefweb user community and are pleased to learn that the content service based around thematic topics is both useful and relevant to your information needs. We would like to...
Staying up to date in your area of humanitarian expertise is always important, so we have decided to introduce a content service called “Topics” to help you achieve this. ReliefWeb’s current design allows you to easily find information either by the latest updates, country or disaster. Now our new section ‘Topics’ will further help you find what you are looking for by focusing your search on...
