Innovation Update: Kimetrica is Simulating the Costs and Impacts of Humanitarian Activities with its Novel Intervention Modeling System

Kimetrica’s Intervention Modeling System simulates the prospective costs and impacts of aid and development activities. This analysis informs the efficient and effective design of humanitarian aid and development intervention portfolios for systemic and long-lasting effects. The Intervention Modeling System is available now for early-adoption partners, and is the first step toward a holistic approach to building sustainable solutions.

Intervention Models serve the needs of multiple organizations by providing program staff with a tool to rapidly evaluate multiple intervention options; allowing donors to compare the net effect of different approaches to a problem; and supporting corporate sustainability offices’ efforts to evaluate mitigation and avoidance strategies. This budding venture is available for early access and has already been used to evaluate various intervention options. In addition, when coupled with domain-specific models (e.g., poverty, nutrition, water, etc.), these intervention strategies can be traced to second- and third-order effects, allowing program staff and analysts to easily untangle the relationships that make aid and development work so complex.

In the complicated world of humanitarian assistance, for every possible intervention, many more fall by the wayside. The opportunity to use historical intervention data and identify the optimal combination of competing intervention options, thus avoiding the repetition of unsuccessful projects and informing optimal project design, was the inspiration for Kimetrica’s Intervention Models.

Most interventions follow a handful of similar forms, with analogous effects. This similarity allows Kimetrica to rapidly model and estimate the effects of each intervention, yielding a direct anticipated impact and associated cost. In addition, as interventions typically have a small number of direct effects, it is possible to represent them through key indicator datasets and then perform downstream analysis through domain-specific models.

Intervention Modeling is one of the many tools that Kimetrica is working on to form a comprehensive toolkit to prospectively evaluate and assist decision-making in complex human environments. 

To learn more or to become an early adoption partner, please click here to get in touch with us 
 

About Kimetrica

Kimetrica provides research, evaluation, survey, information management, and modeling and simulation services for evidence-based decision-making and learning. Kimetrica works with governments and non-profit organizations to increase the impact and efficiency of their social investments, enhance accountability, manage critical risks, and build donor or taxpayer confidence. Kimetrica has successfully managed IDIQ mechanisms and more than 100 analytical and support activities, primarily in East Africa but also around the world. Kimetrica has offices in Broomfield, Colorado; Washington DC; Nairobi, Kenya; and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.