Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

What have humanitarians been reporting on over the past decade?

** 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 unique insight into the global humanitarian situations and responses.

So what were the trends over that time? What were the major issues and themes that humanitarians discussed? What have humanitarian organisations been reporting about? Where have the humanitarian jobs been opened? To help answer some these important questions and develop a general understanding of where the international humanitarian community has been focusing its efforts, we’ve created a new interactive tool called “ReliefWeb Content Trends”.

In addition to the our annual site statistics in a static format, we’ve decided to showcase content history by using API and mapping/visualization technology.

ReliefWeb Content Trends is designed to help you navigate ReliefWeb’s taxonomy data and examine trends over time. This tool is still in the ‘Alpha stage’, and we wanted to share it through the ReliefWeb Labs so that you can give us feedback from the early stage of development.

The “Country Overview” map is the main feature of ReliefWeb Content Trends. Simply mouse over to the country you’re interested in and find how many reports, disaster, jobs or training were posted in a particular year. Change the year to see how the statistics have changed over time.

We’ve also put together some interesting charts outlining the number of pieces information that have been published based on different themes, disaster types, vulnerable groups and source types. Use the year slider to get a perspective on the changes in trend over time.

This is just the first version in a series of online trend analysis tools that we hope to develop. We are already working on new features such as the ability to allow you to "create your own trend" based on ReliefWeb data and taxonomies as well as the option to export data so you can complete your own analysis or apply ReliefWeb trends to your reporting. We are also hoping to integrate other databases in order to enhance your ability to analyze humanitarian trends from a variety of information sources.

We hope that you will check out the “ReliefWeb Content Trends” site and take a moment to fill in the quick survey that will appear in a pop up box while you're there.

Visit the ReliefWeb Content Trends site