The shift towards multi-year humanitarian funding in high-risk contexts presents an opportunity to make better investments against emergency risks. However, to optimize resource allocations, the humanitarian sector must be able to quantify and compare the potential impacts on future emergency response of competing preparedness interventions. In 2014, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) formed a humanitarian preparedness project, funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID). As part of this Ready-to-Respond project, they launched a research initiative aimed at developing a methodology and toolkit to forecast return on investment (ROI) generated by emergency preparedness in relation to time and cash expended on subsequent emergency response scenarios.