This was a ‘think piece’ commissioned for the IFRC Secretariat, reflecting on the two surge deployments I undertook in 2010 – Haiti and Pakistan – and the deployment of teams of specialists to undertake detailed assessments and feed into response option planning, working alongside those completing emergency assessments and starting response operations.
It laid out some approaches for future deployments of (for example) FERST graduates, along with guidance on counterparts, timing, roles and responsibilities; it also includes an early description of Response Option Analysis processes. For those with access to DMIS only, this document is downloadable here.
Quite a lot of this thinking ended up in the IFRC Recovery Guidelines, which is available on the public website.