INFORM Severity Index: Global Humanitarian Crisis Scores across 31 Indicators

ACAPS maintains the INFORM Severity Index, a global monitoring tool that measures the severity of humanitarian crises using 31 core indicators. Updated regularly, the model aggregates data into three weighted dimensions—Impact, Conditions, and Complexity—to assign crises a score from 1 to 5.

Use Cases

• Ranking global humanitarian emergencies using the overall severity category score
• Assessing the 'Complexity' dimension to identify barriers to humanitarian access and displacement
• Evaluating the 'Conditions of affected people' indicator to determine the intensity of immediate needs relative to other crises

Strengths

• Standardized 1-5 scoring scale applied across all 31 indicators
• Expert-led data cleaning and analysis performed by ACAPS technical partners
• Weighted analytical framework that prioritizes affected population conditions at 50% of the total score

Limitations

• Weightings for the three dimensions are currently best estimates and subject to future refinement
• Composite index methodology may aggregate diverse data points in a way that masks specific local nuances

Provenance

Source

ACAPS

Collection Method

Expert collection, cleaning, and analysis of 31 core indicators from various humanitarian sources

Freshness

Regularly updated; last recorded update in March 2026.

Geography

Global