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Each year, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) provides food assistance to around 100 million people in more than 80 countries. Significant investments over the last decade have put planning and optimization at the forefront of tackling emergencies at WFP. A data-driven approach to managing operations has gradually become the norm and has culminated in the creation of a supply chain planning unit and savings of more than USD 150 million—enough to support two million food-insecure people for an entire year. In this paper, we describe three analytical solutions in detail: the Supply Chain Management Dashboard, which uses descriptive and predictive analytics to bring end-to-end visibility and anticipate operational issues; Optimus, which uses a mixed-integer programming model to simultaneously optimize food basket composition and supply chain planning; and DOTS, which is a data integration platform that helps WFP automate and synchronize complex data flows. Three impact studies for Iraq, South Sudan, and COVID-19 show how these tools have changed the way WFP manages its most complex operations. Through analytics, decision makers are now equipped with the insights they need to manage their operations in the best way, thereby saving and changing the lives of millions and bringing the world one step closer to zero hunger.

Environment mainstreaming across the humanitarian operations and long-term development programs is imperative to the new way of working agreed in the World Humanitarian Summit (2016). Mainstreaming environment in Humanitarian-Development nexus is crucial to minimize the environmental impacts of humanitarian projects and to build long term resilience against environmental and climatic risks and vulnerabilities of communities. This study explores the current environmental mainstreaming strategies of humanitarian and development organizations at the institutional and operational level based on specific attributes. This study conducts the case study of leading humanitarian and development organizations, namely, WFP, IFRC, UNDP, and USAID, based on the conceptual framework on mainstreaming strategies derived from various literature. Multiple case study approach was employed based on information collected through various secondary sources and personal consultation with the organizations. The finding of this study signifies the presence of varying environmental mainstreaming practices within the studied organizations, and comparative analysis among them is also presented. Finally, this study suggests that joint contextual environmental (and climate) analysis by humanitarian and development actors and inclusion of environmental consideration in collaborative multi-year programming to minimize environmental damage in protracted crises.

The era of the green revolution has significantly improved rice yield productivity. However, with the growing population and decreasing arable land, rice scientists must find new ways to improve rice productivity. Although hundreds of rice yield-related QTLs were already mapped and some of them were cloned, only a few were utilized for actual systematic introgression breeding programs. In this study, the major yield QTLs Grain Number 1a (Gn1a) and Wealthy Farmer’s Panicle (WFP) were introgressed and stacked in selected NERICA cultivars by marker-assisted backcross breeding (MABB). The DNA markers RM3360, RM3452, and RM5493 were used for foreground selection. At BC3F4 and BC3F5 generation, a combination of marker-assisted selection and phenotypic evaluation were carried out to select lines with target alleles and traits. Further, genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) was conducted to validate the introgression and determine the recurrent parent genome recovery (RPGR) of the selected lines. The Gn1a and/or WFP introgression lines showed significantly higher numbers of spikelets per panicle and primary branching compared to the recurrent parents. In addition, lines with Gn1a and/or WFP alleles were comparatively similar to the recurrent parents (RP) in most yield-related traits. This study demonstrates the success of utilizing yield QTLs and marker-assisted selection to develop and improve rice cultivars.

This thesis applies recent advances in NLP to anomaly detection in Windows OS. More specifically, we experiment using fastText as an embedding combined with an LSTM for state prediction. We explore whether we can model the normal process behavior on Windows and recognize deviations caused by malware. The actions performed by malware typically involve modifying the file system, modifying the Windows registry to change the system configuration & network actions. We developed a Windows kernel driver to capture file, registry, network events. We use fastText to train the embedding model to represent events as vectors. FastText learns not only the syntactic information but also semantic information hidden in the observed kernel events. The IP address, file path, process path, registry key etc. have syntactic structure and semantic relationships. Next, we train a sequence-based anomaly detection model using LSTM to learn the typical behavior of the Windows OS and the processes running in the system. Lastly, we propose a technique to identify measured windows event sequences as normal, or anomalies representing anattack. We evaluate the performance of this anomaly detection system to detect attacks on a system from their kernel level behavior. We collect datasets for normal (attack-free) and process takeover (attack) using the kernel driver system we develop, and use these to test our detection. We show that our approach has high accuracy, precision, and recall. We also propose to release our kernel driver to capture events as open source, to facilitate further research in this area.

The crisis in Somalia has caused appearance of piracy at sea in the Gulf of Aden and the Western Indian Ocean. Somali pirates have become a threat to economic security of the world because almost 30 percent of world oil and 20 percent of global trade passes through the Gulf of Aden. Solving the problem of piracy in this part of the world have included international organizations, institutions, military alliances and the states, acting in accordance with international law and UN Security Council resolutions. The European Union will demonstrate the application of a comprehensive approach to solving the problem of piracy at sea and the crisis in Somalia conducting naval operation — EU NAVFOR Atalanta and operation EUTM under the Common Security and Defense Policy. The paper discusses approaches to solving the problem of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the crisis in Somalia. Also, the paper points to the complexity of the crisis in Somalia and dilemmas correctness principles that are applied to solve the problem piracy at sea. One of goals is protections of vessels of the World Food Programme (WFP) delivering food aid to displaced persons in Somalia. Republic of Serbia joined in this mission and trained and sent one a autonomous team in this military operation for protection WFP. This paper consist the problem of modern piracy, particularly in the area of the Horn of Africa became a real threat for the safety of maritime ships and educational process of Serbian Autonomous vessel protection detachment. Serbian Military Academy adopted and developed educational a training program against piracy applying all the provisions and recommendations of the IMO conventions and IMO model courses for Serbian Autonomous vessel protection detachment.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is the largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide, reaching around 80 million people with food assistance in 75 countries each year. To deal with the operational complexities inherent to its mandate, WFP has been developing tools to assist their decision makers with integrating the supply chain decisions across departments and functional areas. This paper describes a mixed integer linear programming model that simultaneously optimizes the food basket to be delivered, the sourcing plan, the routing plan, and the transfer modality of a long-term recovery operation for each month in a pre-defined time horizon. By connecting traditional supply chain elements to nutritional objectives, we made significant breakthroughs in the operational excellence of WFP's most complex operations, such as Iraq and Yemen. We show how we used optimization to reduce the operational costs in Iraq by 17%, while still supplying 98% of the nutritional targets. Additionally, we show how we are using optimization in Yemen to manage the scale-up of the existing operation from three to six million beneficiaries.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is the largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide, reaching around 80 million people with food assistance in 75 countries each year. To deal with the operational complexities inherent to its mandate, WFP has been developing tools to assist their decision makers with integrating the supply chain decisions across departments and functional areas. This paper describes a mixed integer linear programming model that simultaneously optimizes the food basket to be delivered, the sourcing plan, the routing plan, and the transfer modality of a long-term recovery operation for each month in a pre-defined time horizon. By connecting traditional supply chain elements to nutritional objectives, we made significant breakthroughs in the operational excellence of WFP's most complex operations, such as Iraq and Yemen. We show how we used optimization to reduce the operational costs in Iraq by 17%, while still supplying 98% of the nutritional targets. Additionally, we show how we are using optimization in Yemen to manage the scale-up of the existing operation from three to six million beneficiaries.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is the largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide, reaching around 80 million people with food assistance in 75 countries each year. To deal with the operational complexities inherent to its mandate, WFP has been developing tools to assist their decision makers with integrating the supply chain decisions across departments and functional areas. This paper describes a mixed integer linear programming model that simultaneously optimizes the food basket to be delivered, the sourcing plan, the routing plan, and the transfer modality of a long-term recovery operation for each month in a pre-defined time horizon. By connecting traditional supply chain elements to nutritional objectives, we made significant breakthroughs in the operational excellence of WFP's most complex operations, such as Iraq and Yemen. We show how we used optimization to reduce the operational costs in Iraq by 17%, while still supplying 98% of the nutritional targets. Additionally, we show how we are using optimization in Yemen to manage the scale-up of the existing operation from three to six million beneficiaries.

2016 Olvie Tryani Pontoh, Peranan World Programme (WFP) dalam Menangani Krisis Pangan di Suriah. Di bawah bimbingan Adi Suryadi selaku Pembimbing I dan Pusparida Syahdan selaku Pembimbing II, jurusan Ilmu Hubungan Internasional, Fakultas Ilmu Sosial dan Ilmu Politik, Universitas Hasanuddin. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui bentuk peranan WFP dalam menangani krisis pangan di Suriah dan untuk mengetahui apa saja hambatan yang dihadapi Suriah dalam menangani krisis pangan di Suriah. Metode penelitian dalam tulisan ini menggunakan studi kepustakaan (library research), data yang diperoleh diolah dan dianalisis secara kualitatif dan didiukung dengan data kuantitatif untuk memperoleh hasil yang bersifat deskriptif analitik. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian ditemukan bahwa WFP berhasil mencapai 97% atau sekitar 3.7 juta orang tiap bulannya sebagai penerima bantuan pangan di Suriah dan 1.5 juta pengungsi tiap bulannya di negara tetangga. Program e-card di daerah pengungsi juga telah menugntungkan perekonomian lokal negara tetangga hingga US$3 miliar. Namun dalam melaksanakan programnya, WFP menghadapi berbagai hambatan yaitu masalah keamanan jalur dan kurangnya dana untuk memenuhi seluruh target penerima bantuan.

This paper investigates the use of early warning tools as part of Ethiopia's Disaster Risk Management framework. Analyzing, in particular, the Livelihoods, Early Assessment and Protection tool, Livelihood Integrated Assessment and Hotspots Assessments, the paper delineates the scope and objectives of existing early warning tools, their commonalities and limitations. From a disaster risk financing and insurance perspective, the paper investigates possible enhancements in the existing early warning framework and its use that could facilitate greater timeliness of drought response. The paper argues that based on the existing early warning instruments and continued improvements to the early warning systems, it is possible to enable early action during the onset of a drought.

Upon request of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Principals at their meeting on December 11, 2015, the World Bank agreed to coordinate a process of reviewing key issues and options for significantly scaling up the use of multipurpose cash transfers (MPCTs; including digital cash and vouchers) in the humanitarian space. This note lays out the main findings and options emerging from the process. The main text is complemented by a set of seven appendixes, detailing the process and feedback received, as well as presenting a thorough review of the evidence and evidence gaps in the comparative effectiveness of cash and in-kind programs across humanitarian objectives. This note synthesizes main issues and findings from the process, including defining overarching issues (section 2), setting out the overall context in which a wider use of cash should be considered (section 3), and identifying the specific areas to help unleash a wider use of cash transfers when and where appropriate (section 4).

Despite significant progress the world continues to bear a triple burden of malnutrition. These three burdens are related, but distinctly different, problems: energy deficiencies (hunger), micronutrient deficiencies (hidden hunger), 3 and excessive net energy intake and unhealthy diets overweight/obesity). Despite significant progress, 795 million people still are not getting the minimum dietary energy needs. The majority of these people are in Sub-Saharan Africa, in which 1 in 4 people are hungry; and in South Asia, in which 1 in 6 people are hungry. More than 2 billion people are deficient in key vitamins and minerals7 that are necessary for growth, development, and disease prevention. Globally, over 2 billion people are overweight or obese, two-thirds of whom live in developing countries. This issue clearly is not just a developed country problem. Energy and micronutrient deficiency are contributors to the 165 million children under 5 who are stunted and cannot grow to achieve their full potential. Globally, this number is equivalent to approximately 1 in 4 children under 5 years, with an even more concentrated situation in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (1 in 3 children). Arguably child stunting is one of the biggest development challenges. If not addressed it will profoundly undermine our ability to end poverty and promote shared prosperity.

There is wide variation in how consumption is measured in household surveys both across countries and over time. This variation may confound welfare comparisons in part because these alternative survey designs produce consumption estimates that are differentially influenced by contrasting types of survey response error. Although previous studies have documented the extent of net error in alternative survey designs, little is known about the relative influence of the different response errors that underpin a survey estimate. This study leverages a recent randomized food consumption survey experiment in Tanzania to shed light on the relative influence of these various error types. The observed deviation of measured household consumption from a benchmark is decomposed into item-specific consumption incidence and consumption value so as to investigate effects related to (a) the omission of any consumption and then (b) the error in value reporting conditional on positive consumption. The results show that various survey designs exhibit widely differing error decompositions, and hence a simple summary comparison of the total recorded consumption across surveys will obscure specific error patterns and inhibit the lessons for improved consumption survey design. In light of these findings, the relative performance of common survey designs is discussed, and design lessons are drawn to enhance the accuracy of item-specific consumption reporting and, consequently, the measures of total household food consumption.

The longstanding “cash versus food” debate has received renewed attention in both research and practice. This paper reviews key issues shaping the debate and presents new evidence from randomized and quasi-experimental evaluations that deliberately compare cash and in-kind food transfers in ten developing counties. Findings show that relative effectiveness cannot be generalized: although some differences emerge in terms of food consumption and dietary diversity, average impacts tend to depend on context, specific objectives, and their measurement. Costs for cash transfers and vouchers tend to be significantly lower relative to in-kind food. Yet the consistency and robustness of methods for efficiency analyses varies greatly.

The non-profit association ITHACA cooperates with the World Food Programme in order to define a global drought Early Warning System, mostly based on satellite data, with the scope of mapping critical areas that may be potentially subject to food crises. In 2010 the African regions of Sahel, especially Niger and Chad, faced a relevant food crisis due to strong deficits in agricultural and pastoral production, and the World Food Programme requested technical support to outline the areas most affected by drought. Testing the tools under development, ITHACA analyzed environmental conditions potentially related to the 2010 food crisis. The paper describes the studies performed and their contribution to the improvement of the ITHACA drought Early Warning System.

With more than three-quarters of its workforce employed in agriculture, Malawi is highly vulnerable to any adverse events affecting the agriculture sector, and agricultural risks are ever present in the country. Agricultural risks can obstruct development and enforce poverty traps, particularly for a country as reliant on agriculture as Malawi. Because of the size of the sector in the economy and the importance of agricultural products for export, agricultural growth correlates closely with gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Malawi’s effort to manage risks and to provide relief in response to adverse events diverts significant resources from longer-term development investments. To better understand the dynamics of agricultural risks and identify appropriate responses, incorporate an agricultural risk perspective into decision making, and build the capacity of local stakeholders in risk assessment and management, the agricultural risk management team (ARMT) of the agriculture and environment services department of the World Bank conducted an agriculture sector risk assessment. The purpose of this report is to assess existing agricultural risks, prioritize them according to their frequency and impacts on the sector, and identify areas of risk-management solutions that need deeper specialized attention. Three levels of risks were assessed: production risks, market risks, and enabling environment risks to selected supply chains. The report takes a quantitative and qualitative approach to assessing risk. This report is structured as follows: chapter one gives introduction and context. Chapter two provides an overview of the agriculture sector and the selected crops. Chapter three maps the production, market, and enabling environment risks to food crops and export crops. Chapter four looks at the adverse impacts of agricultural risks in terms of losses, both at the national level and for different regions. Chapter five prioritizes the risks in terms of their frequency and the severity of their impacts, and discusses solutions based on this prioritization, ongoing risk-management activities, and the feedback from the consultative workshop.

Labor-intensive public works programs are important social protection tools in low-income settings, intended to supplement income of poor households and improve public infrastructure. In this evaluation of the Malawi Social Action Fund, an at-scale, government-operated program, across- and within-village randomization is used to estimate effects on food security and use of fertilizer. There is no evidence that the program improves food security, and some negative spillovers to untreated households. These disappointing results hold even under modifications to the design of the program to offer work during the lean rather than harvest season or increase the frequency of payments.

Despite recent calls in support of cash transfers, there is little rigorous evidence of the relative impacts of cash versus in-kind transfers, especially in humanitarian contexts, where a majority of such programs take place. This paper uses data from a randomized experiment in the Democratic Republic of Congo to assess the relative impacts and costs of equivalently valued cash and voucher transfers. The voucher program distorted households’ purchases along both the extensive and intensive margin as compared with unconstrained cash households. Yet there were no differences in food consumption or other measures of well-being, in part due to the fact that voucher households were able to resell part of what they purchased. As there were no significant benefits to vouchers, cash transfers were the more cost effective modality for both the implementing agency and program recipients in this context.

Public Work Programs (PWPs) can be a useful tool for poverty reduction and social protection provision in Myanmar by presenting a coherent framework to achieve several objectives (seasonal income and food security, disaster recovery, community resilience, social cohesion). For PWPsto be effective and sustainable, design should respond to local conditions and implementation should engage government structures that provide a scalable platform.

Cash is an appropriate instrument to provide assistance to poor and vulnerable households in most contexts in Myanmar. Cash transfers (CTs) have the potential to help poor and vulnerable householdsmeet basic needs and encourage investments in human capital accumulation. Building on existing programs such as the stipends program and testing CTs with relatively simple design and implementation arrangements can be a viable option in the short term.

This paper discusses how catastrophe crop risk models can be used to assess food security needs at the sovereign level for the purpose of risk transfer. The rationale for a system to evaluate food security needs at the national level is discussed. The role of technology and remote sensing data availability as an enabler of catastrophe crop risk models is discussed followed by a description of the framework of catastrophe crop models for droughts, representing the peril for which catastrophe models have had the most success. The integration of the output of catastrophe crop models with a food security vulnerability assessment model is described next. Recent advances in analytical modeling of various types of shocks in assessing food security are described but the operational use of these analytical models in the development of food security assessment for risk transfer is seen to be limited for now because of the complexity of these analytical models. The food security vulnerability modeling in the African Risk Capacity, ARC, model is then described as showing a practical solution to the complex problem of assessing food security via a model. Lastly, the challenges faced in risk transfer of sovereign food security risks are discussed.

The report Africa Can Help Feed Africa (World Bank 2012) showed that increasing food staples1 supply can be met by better connecting African markets to each other. That report called for a stronger focus on removing trade barriers and building on the forces of regional integration. This report builds on the lessons of Africa Can Help Feed Africa by looking into the specific circum¬stances met in West Africa, home to one-third of the continent’s population and to some of its most vulnerable countries. Staple foods are the main source of calories in Africa and in West Africa. In that region, rice, followed by maize and cassava, provides the main source of calories in coastal countries, with millet and sorghum being an important source of food in Sahelian countries (Haggblade et al. 2012). The challenge of food supply is particularly acute in West Africa with some of the world’s fastest growing populations, including urban populations. West Africa’s 2011 population of 342 million is expected to increase to 516 million by 2030 and to 815 million by 2050 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division 2013); in this time frame, the region’s urban population will grow from 44 percent to 63 percent of the total population (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division 2014). As this report will show, strong reasons exist to bring a more strategic focus on promoting regional trade. The first compelling reason is that there is already a sizeable amount of trade in the region, revealing existing important complementarities between countries in the ECOWAS space. Because a large share of this trade is informal, this reality is not always well taken into account. A second reason is that developing these complementarities by facilitating trade and creating the regional soft and hard infra¬structure to incite cross-border flows would further enable (a) the exploitation of comparative advan¬tages and economies of scale in the region; (b) access to and diffusion of better production technologies; (c) competitive access to inputs, research, and extension services; and (d) improved security in the face of shocks that lead to food crises. Finally, a third reason is that existing national policies that affect trade are, by and large, inefficient and incoherent at the regional level; therefore a better use of policy making and institutions is needed to achieve food policy objectives.

Between 2008 and 2012 the urban/rural poverty divide substantially narrowed down, which was the result of relatively stable rural and rising urban poverty rates. Over the same period, food inflation spiked, whereby strong links between domestic and global price movements were observed owed to major import dependence on food. The high shares of consumption that households dedicate to food, especially among the poor, leave limited scope to deal with food price surges by economizing on non-food expenditure. Food price increases of 5, 10, and 15 percent are estimated to increase poverty rates between 2 and 5 percentage points in the baseline scenario.

This report provides an analysis of food security in Moldova. It attempts to outline the specific characteristics of food insecurity found in Moldova and to identify its underlying causes. This report provides a basis on which sound public policy can be built. The understanding of food security as a concept has evolved in Moldova over time, but policy has remained focused on food availability as the primary attribute of food security. The report looks at how many people are food insecure in Moldova, where these people live, who they are, and why they face food security challenges. The report adopts the international food security concept and analytical framework based on the four key dimensions: (i) the availability of food; (ii) access to food; (iii) utilization of food; and (iv) the stability of these three dimensions over time. The report is divided into following parts. The part one outlines the methodology used and provides a brief overview of Moldovas agriculture sector. In part two the report focuses on overall food security outcomes by assessing how many people are food insecure in Moldova, where do they live, who they are, and when is food security most affecting them. Part three provides a comprehensive analysis of the four dimensions of food security (availability, access, utilization, and stability) and identifies bottlenecks. Part four introduces the institutional actors and the policy framework. The report concludes with policy recommendations.

Since Liberia’s Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic began in March 2014, nearly 10,000 persons have contracted the virus and more than 4,000 have died. The economic impact of Ebola survey is a high frequency cell phone survey designed to monitor the socio-economic impacts of the EVD crisis in Liberia. The survey has been conducted in five rounds from October 2014 to March 2015. The sample is based on the nationally representative household income and expenditure survey (HIES) implemented from February to August 2014 by the Liberia institute of statistics and geo-information services (LISGIS). The report presents an update of the epidemiological situation in Liberia and associated response efforts at the time of the fifth round of data collection (March 12-18, 2015). It gives an updates on the employment, prices, food security, coping strategies, health, and education indicators surveyed.

This report presents an assessment of school feeding policies and institutions that affect young children in Benin. The analysis is based on a World Bank tool developed as part of the systems approach for better education results (SABER) initiative that aims to systematically assess education systems against evidence based global standards and good practice to assist countries reform their education systems for proper learning for all. SABER school feeding collects, analyzes, and disseminates comprehensive information on school feeding policies around the world. The overall objective of the initiative is to help countries design effective policies to improve their education systems facilitate comparative policy analysis, identify key areas to focus investment, and assist in disseminating good practice.

South Sudan is a fragile country beset by conflicts. The oil shutdown accompanied by a border closure in 2012 was resolved, but ongoing military clashes between factions of the ruling party have affected livelihoods since December 2013. Before the onset of these conflicts, large parts of the population were food insecure (2 out of 3 people) and lived in poverty (1 out of 2 people). This note estimates and juxtaposes the impact of the oil shutdown and the ongoing military conflict on livelihoods based on food price changes, predicted harvest losses and displacement. The resulting poverty estimates help to understand the structural implications of these conflicts. But to validate these numbers, test the underlying modeling assumptions and inform a policy response, new data needs to be collected urgently.