A pilot study This report, commissioned under ALNAP's Humanitarian Performance Project, aims to provide a system-level mapping and assessment of international humanitarian assistance. It cites that current efforts to increase humanitarian engagement and investment in disaster risk reduction (DRR) should reap future benefits in terms of improved preparedness and more timely, efficient and locally grounded responses. The need to focus on DRR was highlighted by studies looking at the humanitarian implications of climate change. To this end, the report 1) defines key criteria for assessing system performance and progress, 2) assesses the system's performance over the past two years against these criteria and 3) presents new, previously unavailable descriptive statistics and 4) highlights some new initiatives in policy and practice.