This scope of work relates to the technical track of the Crisis Protection Gap project.

The objective of this workstream is undertake a ‘top-down’ quantitative analysis of the cost of humanitarian response, to understand the patterns and drivers of these costs.

The scope is expected to consist of four activities. First, the consultant is expected to review and collate information from existing databases on the costs of international humanitarian response. This will include data from the United Nations Financial Tracking Service (FTS) and Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO) but may also include other databases. These databases should be reviewed to identify which database, or combination of databases, provides the most comprehensive perspective on the costs of international humanitarian responses.

Second, the consultant will be expected to use the selected database(s) to provide descriptive information regarding how the costs of humanitarian response vary by country/region, the crisis (crises) that trigger the need for humanitarian response, and the nature of the humanitarian response provided. In relation to the crisis (crises) events triggering a humanitarian response, there is a particular interest in the costs associated with responding to cyclones, diseases, droughts and conflict induced displacement.

Third, the consultant should assess the plausibility, and robustness, of using this data to develop explanatory (econometric) models that seek to explain humanitarian response costs. To the extent that the development of such models are considered plausible and robust, to undertake the econometric analysis and provide a commentary on the results and their reliability. The explanatory models should explore models that seek to explain the costs of responding to each of the four types of crisis identified above (cyclones, diseases, droughts and conflict induced displacement). Researchers are invited to investigate a wide range of factors that might plausibly help explain these costs but should, as a minimum, consider:

• exposure to the disaster event (this may be measured, for example, in terms of the number of poor and vulnerable people affected by the disaster);
• characteristics of the hazard event i.e. the intensity of the cyclone or severity of the drought
• the vulnerability and coping capacity of the country in relation to disaster events, as measured, for example, by indices such as INFORM;
• geographic factors (for example whether the country is landlocked or proxies for the complexity/cost of providing a response in that location)

The work should conclude with an overall assessment of whether this type of top-down quantitative analysis is likely to be useful given the overall objectives of the Crisis Protection Gap technical workstream. It should also identify further related work that might support the overall objectives as well as any recommendations on data on humanitarian response costs or drivers that are not currently (publicly) available, but which it would be valuable for the international community to collect and/or release.