Sitrep Project: Sharing Information in Humanitarian Emergencies

The accuracy and availability of information plays a critical role in the humanitarian response to emergencies. Situation reports, or "sitreps," are a type of document used by non-governmental organizations, UN agencies, the military, and other actors involved in emergency response to share information about conditions on the ground. Though widely used, sitreps have been recognized as a problematic, often unwieldy tool with little or no standardization across agencies.

The Sitrep Project aims to investigate the challenges and opportunities for situation reporting in disaster response. Working with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), we use a combination of qualitative research methods and document analysis to illustrate current practices in the humanitarian sector, with a specific focus on OCHA's situation reports, and we offer recommendations toward the creation of a general situation report data model that could enable more efficient sharing of information.