This page is a practical, applied data studio package for developing agriculture, food security, and environmental monitoring workflows, specifically for humanitarian emergency preparedness and response to events within international settings. It combines datasets relevant to humanitarian food security risk (crop condition, drought stress, rangeland health, and environmental degradation indicators), up-to-date population and geospatial datasets (e.g., rainfall, soil moisture, land surface temperature, vegetation health) and imagery to give an emergency responder a one-stop location to find datasets, dashboards, case studies, and how-to guidance most relevant to their use case(s), with a specific focus on drought-driven and conflict-driven food insecurity.
This data studio focuses on generalized agricultural stress, seasonal crop condition, and food security outcome monitoring, with guidance on data limitations and integration with complementary food security, agricultural, and humanitarian response systems, and prioritizes the protection of at-risk populations through the implementation of early warning systems, vulnerability mapping, and intervention targeting. Built for humanitarian responders, food security and livelihoods clusters, agricultural monitoring programs, researchers, and data teams.
These datasets are primarily linked to the systemic risk definition defined in the IPCC's 2021 report: "the potential for adverse consequences for human or ecological systems, arising from the interaction of climate-related hazards, exposure, and vulnerability." This allows us to assess food security risk using remotely-sensed datasets, combining environmental hazard indicators (rainfall anomalies, vegetation stress, soil moisture deficits) with exposure and vulnerability layers (population, livelihood zones, cropland extent) to inform food security decision-making.
Note that this data studio is being created in conjunction with a food security risk decision-making guide.
What is food security? Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs for an active and healthy life. It rests on four pillars: availability (enough food is produced or supplied), access (people can obtain it, physically and financially), utilization (the body can effectively use the food, tied to nutrition and health), and stability (these conditions hold over time, not just at a single moment). Learn more: FAO, Food Security Concepts and Frameworks
Acute vs. chronic food insecurity Acute food insecurity is a severe episode occurring at a specific point in time, threatening lives or livelihoods, regardless of the underlying cause. Chronic food insecurity is a longer-term, persistent inability to meet minimum food consumption requirements over an extended period. Humanitarian response is generally organized around acute food insecurity, since it is what triggers emergency intervention. Learn more: FEWS NET, Acute Food Insecurity
The IPC Acute Food Insecurity Classification The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) is the common international standard used to classify the severity of acute food insecurity, on a five-phase scale: Phase 1 (Minimal), Phase 2 (Stressed), Phase 3 (Crisis), Phase 4 (Emergency), and Phase 5 (Catastrophe/Famine). Classifications combine food consumption, livelihood, and nutrition/mortality evidence, and are used by governments and humanitarian agencies to prioritize response. Learn more: IPC, The Phases and IPC, Technical Manual
What causes food insecurity? Food insecurity can be driven by climate-related hazards (drought, erratic rainfall, floods that damage crops or rangeland), conflict (displacement, destroyed infrastructure, disrupted markets and trade routes, restricted humanitarian access), and economic shocks (price spikes, currency devaluation, loss of income). These drivers frequently compound one another, for example, conflict can disrupt the agricultural labor and supply chains needed to cope with a drought, so most acute food security crises reflect more than one driver acting at once.
Related concepts in this data studio Because agricultural stress, drought, and conflict-driven food insecurity are closely linked to other hazard types covered elsewhere in this data series (for example, drought-driven displacement or conflict-driven infrastructure damage), teams working on food security may also want to review related Lifelines Data Studio Packages for complementary context.
Humanitarian situations are immensely complex, fast-moving situations where utilized datasets and the underlying context often changes depending on the situation.
Below, we have highlighted some best practices for how to utilize these datasets, grouped by the time period to be used:
| Time period | Actions to be taken |
|---|---|
| Either before an emergency occurs, or before the user goes to an emergency situation | • Ensure that the common operational datasets are available.
• Users should prioritize anticipatory action when possible and consider how integrating satellite data and tools (e.g., FEWS NET early warning outlooks, drought and vegetation triggers) can help inform new or existing action plans. This means having a pre-agreed trigger, pre-agreed activity, and pre-arranged funding available. Review the case studies for more information. • Obtain access to the vegetation, rainfall, and soil moisture datasets for the area of interest. • Have API access or downloaded static datasets (e.g., cropland masks, livelihood zones, population data) available ahead of time. |
| During the emergency situation itself | • Ensure that up-to-date information about food security conditions and impacts is collected by stakeholders (FEWS NET, IPC, WFP, cluster partners) and shared with your group.
• Ensure that data pipelines or consistent downloads of more dynamic datasets (e.g., near-real-time vegetation condition, rainfall anomalies, soil moisture) are made available. |
This is not an exhaustive list of training opportunities, but are potential mechanisms to obtain training in EO implementation for food security and agricultural monitoring. Please reach out to the team if you have additional suggestions!
