ACAPS INFORM Severity Index

Data Explorer & Analytics
Active Crises
Affected Countries
Loading map data…
Crises by Driver
Number of Crises and Avg Category Score over time
Top N Scores
Top N by Indicator

Severity Index Monthly Data

Loading…

INFORM Severity Index

A quantitative tool developed by ACAPS for measuring and comparing the severity of humanitarian crises. It enables evidence-based prioritisation by integrating data from over 30 credible publicly available sources into a single, transparent composite score.

Purpose

The INFORM Severity Index evaluates the scale and severity of humanitarian need at both national and subnational levels. By combining dynamic crisis impact data with structural indicators, it produces severity scores that are comparable across crises, countries, and time periods.

The index explicitly acknowledges that not all people affected by a crisis experience the same level of need — and aims to capture this distribution of severity through its multi-dimensional approach.

Three Core Dimensions

Impact of the Crisis
Weight: 33%
Conditions of Affected People
Weight: 66%
Complexity of the Crisis
Weight: 30%

All indicators are scored on a 0–10 scale. Each dimension is a weighted composite of sub-indicators capturing specific aspects of crisis severity. The final index score is derived by aggregating across all three dimensions.

Severity Categories

Final scores are grouped into five categories:

1
Very Low
2
Low
3
Medium
4
High
5
Very High

Inclusion Criteria

A crisis qualifies for inclusion in the index if at least one of the following conditions is met:

Activation also takes into account national response capacity and the extent to which external humanitarian intervention is required.

Reliability

Each crisis score is accompanied by a reliability estimate reflecting the quality, recency, and coverage of the underlying data. Where fewer or lower-quality sources are available, the reliability rating is lower, signalling increased uncertainty in the score.

Institutional Adoption

Sync & Calculate

Ready.