Yemen Assessment and Monitoring Working Group Assessment: Approach Overview - Briefing note | June 2016

Background

Coordinating assessments is an important element in saving lives and restoring people's livelihoods. Along with emergency preparedness, the timeliness and quality of assessments help determine an effective humanitarian response. Credible and accurate assessment results are the basis for needs-based strategic planning and systemwide monitoring. This discussion note provides an overview of Yemen’s assessment approach and assessment components to support this approach.

Coordinating Assessments in Yemen: Harmonised Assessments

The context in Yemen requires a harmonized assessment approach. The diverse information needs spread across the humanitarian community cannot be addressed by a promoting a single joint assessment (i.e. MIRA), which is more appropriate in early phases of crises.

The harmonised approach promotes the flexibility organizations need to address their own information needs, while promoting the use of common assessment tools to ensure assessments can be collated and compared to develop a common understanding of needs.

Components

The following components aim to support the AM WG implementation of the 2016 Action plan, specifically the achievement of the four AM WG Outputs.

• ActivityInfo Assessment Database: This online database captures information from planned, ongoing and completed assessments. It is the repository for all assessments and will be updated to include indicators, severity scales and quality rating information – essentially the needs database. (AM WG Output #1)

• Assessment Mapping: This template coordinates the reporting of planned, ongoing and completed assessments - Clusters report quarterly and AHCTs report monthly. The excel file is linked to the ActivityInfo Database and all reported assessments are uploaded onto the ActivityInfo Database.(AM WG Output #1)

• Common Assessment Indicators: These ICCM defined indicators are the information needs across sectors to ensure that humanitarian response planning is informed by assessment findings. These indicators should be incorporated into multi-sector assessments and will be used to synthesize findings to provide a common understanding of needs. (AM WG Output #2)

• Severity Scales: These inter-sectoral scales provide a framework for sectors to determine the severity of sectoral needs in a defined geographic area. The framework is standard across sectors; however, each sector defines sector specific scales. While, the sources of information may be broader than assessments, the definitions of the scales and the related verbal qualifiers will be adapted for use in assessments (i.e. Initial Situation Tool). (AM WG Output #2)

• Initial Situation Tool: This joint assessment tool was developed to support emergency preparedness. Designed for use up to 72 hours after a sudden onset emergency (i.e. flooding), this tool provides the minimum information needed for emergency programming and assessment planning. It will be conducted by emergency assessment teams at the hub level. (AM WG Output #2 & Output #3)

• Quality Rating Checklist: This checklist helps organizations to conduct assessments that are implemented in accordance with humanitarian principles. Based on minimum standards for assessment quality, organizations will complete the checklist, which can translate into a quality score. (AM WG Output #3)