Return on Investment in Emergency Preparedness: Phase 2 of a United Nations Inter-Agency Project to Develop a Toolkit for the Humanitarian Community

Rome (Italy): Boston Consulting Group (BCG), 2017.

English

25 p.

ELR3213

The shift towards multi-year humanitarian funding in high-risk contexts presents an opportunity to make better investments against emergency risks. However, to optimize resource allocations, the humanitarian sector must be able to quantify and compare the potential impacts on future emergency response of competing preparedness interventions. In 2014, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) formed a humanitarian preparedness project, funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID). As part of this Ready-to-Respond project, they launched a research initiative aimed at developing a methodology and toolkit to forecast return on investment (ROI) generated by emergency preparedness in relation to time and cash expended on subsequent emergency response scenarios. Phase 1, a pilot study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and published in 2015, produced a methodology and a prototype spreadsheetbased ROI tool, and provided proof of concept. Phase 2, described here, broadened the partnership to include the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and was conducted by Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC). Eighty-four preparedness investments (35 from Phase 1 and 49 from Phase 2) were analysed to inform development of the methodology and tool. Each was tested for impact on emergency response models for the relevant country.

Electronic ed.

Public

ELR 3213

Anglais

MON-129961