The IASC Task Team on Preparedness and Resilience has developed the ‘Emergency Response Preparedness’ (ERP) approach to enable the international humanitarian system to apply a proactive approach to emergency preparedness. The ERP guidance builds on the importance placed by the IASC Transformative Agenda on preparedness on both the programmatic and financial side and, in particular, for HCT and IASC organizations to act on specific early warning indicators to engage in inter‐agency contingency planning and other coordinated preparedness actions to improve collective response readiness.

The ERP approach can be complementary to development action, e.g. through an UNDAF, that seeks to build national and local resilience, including preparedness capacity – especially where international and national capacity can be closely coordinated. The ERP replaces the ‘Inter-Agency Contingency Planning Guidelines for Humanitarian Assistance’ as developed in 2001 and updated in 2007.