A Review of Needs Assessment Tools, Response Analysis Frameworks, and Targeting Guidance for Urban Humanitarian Response

The magnitude of urban disasters, high population densities, and a complex social, political and institutional environment has challenged the manner in which humanitarian agencies are used to working. Humanitarian agencies are now grappling with how to change their approaches to this reality. This desk review aims to provide an audit and analysis of existing needs assessments, response analysis frameworks and targeting approaches for use in urban post-conflict emergency response. The review found that despite the increasing number of urban responses, the development of tools or guidelines remain behind. Needs assessment and response frameworks tend to be sector or thematic specific, making it hard to identify priorities between sectors, whilst urban targeting approaches have not been translated into detailed available guidance. There is a need for development of urban tools that are inclusive, coherent, cost-effective, rigorously tested, and build on existing good practice.