Crisis Protection Gap - Bottom Up Costing Analysis

What crises could emerge over the coming years? How will they impact on the lives of poor and vulnerable people? And how should funds be pre-positioned to mitigate and manage the impacts of these shocks? These are the questions that country governments, the international system, and donors will need to ask if pre-arranged financing is to become the default way to pay for managing the costs of disasters.

It is increasingly possible to estimate crisis related costs ahead of time. Combining information about crises-related expenditures with risk modelling approaches can provide realistic estimates of the likelihood and magnitude of crisis costs over the coming years. This type of probabilistic crisis risk information1 is critical to inform how funds should be pre-positioned to meet the costs of tomorrow’s crises. However, while data, modelling methods, and metrics for quantifying and communicating risk do exist, as yet there is no single source of trusted and easily interpreted predictive crisis risk information that is directly relevant for longer term financial planning of governments and the international system.

As part of this area of the Crisis Protection Gap project, we are looking for a consultant to provide an assessment of the current evidence base on the emergency response costs associated when responding to four crisis types:

1. Droughts
2. Conflict-induced displacement
3. Disease
4. Cyclones

The work will follow:

• a policy engagement track: to identify how a mechanism to assess the crisis protection gap best works with and within the current architecture
• a technical track: to explore the feasible technical approaches for producing this type of multi-hazard risk information at a global scale.