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Methodology

Humanitarian Hub Data Disclaimer and Methodology

How to read the live humanitarian figures we publish, and the limits that come with them

The short version

The Humanitarian Hub brings together information published by other organisations. Humanitarian data can be incomplete, delayed or later revised. Use the Hub to understand the situation, but always check the original source before making an operational, funding or safety decision.

Accuracy and completeness

The Humanitarian Hub aggregates figures published by third-party humanitarian organisations. We do not collect this data ourselves and we do not alter the reported values. Feeds are cached to keep the map responsive, so a figure on screen may be older than the publisher's latest release.

Humanitarian data is often partial. A country may have no published figure for a metric, which the hub shows as "Not reported". That is a coverage gap, not a value of zero. Published figures are also revised, sometimes substantially, as assessments are completed.

Why figures should not be added together

Each source measures a different population using a different method and reference period. A displaced person is frequently also counted as a person in need, and food insecurity analyses cover only the areas assessed in that round. Adding numbers across sources double counts people, so the hub keeps every metric on its own axis and never produces a combined headcount.

Where a source total is clearly stale or partial, we compare it against United Nations national population baselines and label the reference year on screen. This is a sanity check on the denominator, not a correction of the publisher's data.

No reliance and no liability

The hub is provided for general information and planning context only. It is not a substitute for official assessments, security advice, medical advice, or legal advice, and it must not be used as the sole basis for operational, funding, or safeguarding decisions. Verify any figure with the original publisher before you act on it.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Synergaid Pty Ltd gives no warranty as to the accuracy, currency, or fitness for purpose of the aggregated data, and accepts no liability for any loss or damage arising from its use. Nothing here excludes rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law. See our Terms of Service for the full terms that govern use of this site.

Boundaries and names

Boundaries, names, and designations shown on the map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by Synergaid.

Map geometries and country names follow the reference layers published by the data providers. Where a boundary, a name, or a status is disputed, the depiction reflects the provider's dataset rather than any position held by Synergaid.

AI generated summaries

AllyGPT summaries in the hub are generated from the same cached figures and can contain errors or omissions. Always check an AI summary against the underlying source figures and the linked situation reports before quoting it.

How to Report Data Inaccuracies

If a figure looks wrong, tell us and we will trace it back to the source feed and correct or withdraw it. Use our contact form and include the country, the metric, and the date you saw it.

Sources, Attribution and Licences

  • OCHA HNO via HDX HAPI

    People in need, from the annual Humanitarian Needs Overview per country

    Counts, People assessed as in need of humanitarian assistance in the reference year.

    Updated Annual, with in-year revisions. Licence, Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations.

  • IPC and CH

    Acute food insecurity headcounts by phase, including Phase 3 and above

    Counts, People in a given acute food insecurity phase during one analysis period.

    Updated Per analysis round, several times a year per country. Licence, IPC and CH terms of use, attribution required.

  • IOM DTM

    Internally displaced person estimates from displacement tracking rounds

    Counts, Internally displaced people counted in a tracking round, which is not the same universe as IDMC stock figures.

    Updated Per round, monthly to quarterly depending on the operation. Licence, IOM DTM terms of use, attribution and no-resale conditions.

  • ACLED

    Conflict event and fatality counts used for the conflict layer

    Counts, Recorded political violence events and reported fatalities, not people in need.

    Updated Weekly. Licence, ACLED terms of use, attribution required, non-commercial by default.

  • GDACS

    Rapid disaster alerts and severity levels for sudden-onset events

    Counts, Individual sudden-onset hazard events and their modelled severity.

    Updated Continuous. Licence, European Commission reuse notice, attribution required.

  • ReliefWeb

    Situation reports and updates linked from each country profile

    Counts, Published documents, not a population count.

    Updated Continuous. Licence, ReliefWeb terms of service, attribution required.

  • UN World Population Prospects 2024

    National population baselines used as the denominator sanity check when a source total is stale or partial

    Counts, Total resident national population for the reference year.

    Updated Biennial revision. Licence, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO.

  • OCHA HPC

    Response plan figures, people in need and people targeted, used where a country has no HNO row in HDX HAPI

    Counts, People in need and people targeted under a published response plan.

    Updated Per appeal, revised in year. Licence, Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations.

  • WFP food prices via HDX HAPI

    Median market prices per food item for each country, with the reporting market count and the observation date

    Counts, Observed prices in monitored markets, in the currency WFP published, never converted, never compared across countries.

    Updated Monthly, per market and per item. Licence, Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations.

  • fawazahmed0/currency-api

    Daily reference exchange rates, used only to show WFP food prices alongside an approximate AUD/USD/GBP/EUR figure for context

    Counts, Reference conversion rates for context only, not a live market quote. Never used for accounting, and the original local-currency figure is always shown alongside it.

    Updated Daily. Licence, CC0 (public domain).

  • JRC ASAP

    Agricultural production anomaly category per country, one of no hotspot, hotspot, major hotspot, or not assessed

    Counts, A category describing crop and rangeland conditions for one bulletin month, not a population count.

    Updated Monthly bulletin. Licence, European Commission reuse notice, attribution required.

  • Australian Sanctions Consolidated List (DFAT)

    Whether a country currently has an active Australian sanctions regime, for the Country Risk & Compliance panel

    Counts, A yes/no flag derived from DFAT’s own regime list for one snapshot date, not a substitute for checking dfat.gov.au directly before making a compliance decision.

    Updated Snapshot, refreshed manually via a verified ingest run, not continuous. Licence, Australian Government, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, informational reuse.

  • Smartraveller travel advice (DFAT)

    The current travel-advice level, summary and last-revised date for the Country Risk & Compliance panel, matched to the tracked country by its Smartraveller destination-page slug

    Counts, A travel-advice tier for one destination page, a different DFAT product from the sanctions list above, not legal or compliance advice and not a substitute for checking smartraveller.gov.au directly before travel.

    Updated Live-fetched, cached up to 15 minutes (matches the feed’s own Cache-Control). Licence, Australian Government, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, informational reuse.

  • ACAPS INFORM Severity Index

    A 1-5 severity band per country, summarising the severity of active humanitarian crises

    Counts, ACAPS’s composite index score on a 0-10 scale, bucketed here into the 1-5 band shown above, not a population count.

    Updated Monthly bulletin. Licence, ACAPS terms of use, attribution required.

  • IDMC Global Internal Displacement Database

    Validated annual internal-displacement estimates per country, both the population living in displacement at year end and the new displacements recorded during the year

    Counts, Two separate universes. A stock is people living in internal displacement at 31 December of the reporting year. A flow is internal displacements recorded during that year, a movement count in which one person can appear more than once, so a flow is never a population and the two are never added.

    Updated Annual validated release, published each May. Licence, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO, attribution to IDMC required.

  • IDMC Internal Displacement Updates

    Preliminary reports of individual displacement events in the last 180 days, shown as early signals beside the validated annual estimates

    Counts, One reported displacement event, with the movement count reported for that event alone. Events can overlap in time and place, one person can appear in several, and a later report can supersede an earlier one, so these figures are counts of single reports and are never added together or read as a population.

    Updated Updated most working days, revised or withdrawn as IDMC verifies each report. Licence, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO, attribution to IDMC required.

  • IDMC GIDD figure analyses

    IDMC's own written methodology, sources and caveats for each validated annual figure, shown beside the figure it was written about

    Counts, Commentary, not a figure. Each block describes one cause and one universe, so an analysis written about a movement count is never shown beneath a population figure, and the text carries no number the hub renders as data.

    Updated Annual, alongside each validated GIDD release. Licence, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO, attribution to IDMC required.