What is the humanitarian challenge?

Working in close proximity with affected populations to conduct targeting, registration, and distribution is common practice of implementing cash and voucher assistance. However, this is not always feasible particularly when communities are in hard-to-reach areas due to geographical challenges, impacts of disasters, crises, or conflicts. Such areas might be very remote with a widely dispersed population or areas with extreme climate and topography. Challenges in terms of access, security, costs, and efforts to get in these areas may complicate a response. Visiting people also assumes humanitarian organisations know where they are, and in some cases communities in unmapped areas are forgotten and left behind. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted several issues when physical access is limited or not possible to reach communities targeted for assistance.

What is innovative about this project?

This project will develop a tool that can strengthen humanitarian service delivery in hard-to-reach or inaccessible areas, where populations are often not assisted. The project will explore how new technological developments and non-traditional data sources can be used to inform and enable protection of affected people and assistance designed to meet their needs regardless of access.

What are the expected outcomes?

The project is designed as an early-stage innovation process, where a needs assessment and market dialogue will inform the choice of solution, considering non-traditional data sources, big data, artificial intelligence, and other technologies. The long-term goal is an accountable humanitarian cash and voucher assistance reaching the most vulnerable in hard-to-reach areas.

Who are the project partners?

This project is a partnership between Norwegian Red Cross, IFRC and ICRC.