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Structured Humanitarian Assistance Reporting (SHARE)

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Structured Humanitarian Assistance Reporting (SHARE) By Dennis King (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) and Maxx Dilley (University of Wisconsin Disaster Management Center) 24 May 2001 In any emergency, there is certain basic information that emergency relief and recovery organizations need to know, such as: How many people are affected and what are their needs Where are the affected areas and affected populations located What is the extent of the damage and needs Who is providing assistance and where are they working What factors affect security and access of emergency workers to the affected populations Humanitarian responses to major disasters can involve dozens, even hundreds of organizations from within and outside the affected area. Amidst the chaotic and rapid changing situation, no single organization or entity has all of the necessary information. Making this core information available to the wider humanitarian community not only reduces duplication of effort, but also enhances coordination and provides a common knowledge base so that this critical information can be pooled, analyzed, compared, contrasted, validated, reconciled and mapped. In order to make this information from multiple sources "sharable" and usable by other organizations, a simple standard approach should be used when collecting, reporting, and presenting this information. This approach, known as SHARE, is not a new concept and is now being promoted by the inter-agency Geographic Information Support Team (GIST)1. According to the SHARE approach, when information important for emergency relief and recovery operations is collected, reported and represented, it should include: Geo-reference or locational information indicating where the data was collected or what location or area it represents A time-stamp indicating when the data was collected and in some cases at what frequency – to determine the currency of the information Information about the data itself (metadata), including who collected the information (the source), what standards and indicators were used, and how the data was measured or derived – to evaluate the credibility of the information Systematically collected information adhering to this format lends itself to being organized into databases, analyzed and mapped. It also allows the information to be used and analyzed by someone other than the originator. All too often, metadata is assumed and the information is only disseminated within an organization, without recognizing its value to other organizations. The internet and websites such as ReliefWeb made such time-critical, operationally-valuable information all the more available and retrievable in the public domain, information that used to only be disseminated by facsimile or mail.