Distribution by Region

Distribution by Organisation Type, Document Type, Region and Year

Contingency planning occurs mostly in documents published in North America and Europe. Overall, the top five contributors in terms of occurrences are IGO, RC, C/B, Net and NGO organisations.

IGO documents provide the greatest number of occurrences, primarily from activity reports and general documents published in North America. In second place, occurrences from RC were mostly obtained from activity reports published in Europe. Occurrences from C/B were solely found in European general documents.

Occurrences from Net were obtained primarily from North American and Asian activity reports. Lastly, NGO also generates a considerable number of occurrences from Asian, African and European activity reports.

From a practical and operational perspective, one of the most important benefits of contingency planning is the identification of constraints prior to the onset of a crisis, allowing preparedness actions to be identified and implemented.

Contingency planning gives humanitarians and (sic) opportunity [to] assess, think, and discuss response options before the pressure of a crisis makes it difficult.

With the adoption of the 2009 policy, OCHA ROs focus on three key areas, particularly where there is no country office: response preparedness, including early warning and contingency planning; support to emergency response; and developing regional coordination networks.

Steps to address these challenges will include: • Increasing advocacy and awareness of critical health needs and health care delivery challenges in countries in chronic crisis including Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and West Bank and Gaza strip. • Strengthening coordination with regional stakeholders and accelerating support to Member States in the design and implementation of emergency preparedness and hazard mitigation programmes. • Increasing focus on training, contingency planning and other response readiness modalities using an all hazards approach that includes avian and pandemic influenza. • Improving WHO's ability to lead and manage the Health Cluster response to major crises and complex emergencies.

It also HC and HCT and prepares a consolidated provides tools such as contingency planning, Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP), which is hazard mapping and early warning reports. evidence based and prioritized.

Following the identification of specific preparedness needs in target countries, the Office aims to provide support to humanitarian partners and Governments in key areas such as the establishment of coordination structures, contingency planning, data preparedness and needs assessment readiness.

NGOs and donors were regularly included in coordination activities, including CHAP/CAP processes and contingency planning.

In view of the large numbers of people affected by El Niño in 2015 and 2016, it is evident that more progress is urgently required: • Contingency planning and other preparedness activities need to be timely and more systematic and methodological.

In the case of contingency planning , for example, as Richard Choularton argues in his Network Paper: 'More consistent use of terms related to contingency planning and preparedness is needed to help improve the sharing of experience, lessons and practice'. But there are dangers here, even where we avoid the over-academic approach and look for something more practical. One is that the drive towards consistency may develop into a struggle between different groups or organisations to impose their terms and meanings on everyone else. There is also the counter-risk that consensus achieved through committee will result in definitions that try to say too much in order to keep all the stakeholders happy.

Market analysis and market-based programming also opens up opportunities to link with longer-term development programming and connect water and sanitation issues with food security issues. Market analysis could also play a role in preparedness and contingency planning, helping to develop better and timelier responses and more realistic response triggers, potentially mitigating the impacts of a crisis.

The chart below represents the distribution of contingency planning between 2005 and 2019 in terms of the number of occurrences and relative frequency of occurrences. It also allows you to view the distribution across Regions, Organisations and Document types.