The ICA is a process that helps WFP, governments, and partners identify the most suitable programmatic strategies - such as resilience building, disaster risk reduction, and social protection - for specific geographic areas. It relies on historical trend analyses across various technical and sectoral fields. These analyses are combined to find areas where different challenges and priorities overlap, guiding where and how to focus support.
ICA combines findings from trend analyses and complementary information on Food security and nutrition, Exposure and risk to shocks; Aggravating factors, i.e. environmental factors that can increase the severity or impacts of shocks; Livelihood types; and Additional information, such as security and political contexts, markets and prices, infrastructure, population density, etc.
By analysing and overlaying the findings of these different data sets into maps, combinations of recurring food insecurity and undernutrition, shocks, and aggravating factors, can be identified – both geographically and by livelihood groups. These in turn help identify overall programmatic strategies and guide where to focus deeper thematic analysis to inform the selection of programme activities, drawing on the comparative advantages and technical expertise of governments, partners, communities, and affected populations.