People in Need (PIN)

Owned by Jean-Christophe Barbiche (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jun 14, 2022 by Aliocha Salagnac
2 min read

 Other tools


Estimate WASH People in Need (PIN) figures

Not all people affected by the crisis are in need for assistance. The part of the affected population in need for WASH support is called WASH People in Need (PIN). Refer to the “Humanitarian Profile Support Guidance” in key tools and guideline for more details on the difference between affected population, PIN and target.

Once the inter-sectorial analysis has defined the drivers, scope and scale of the crisis, the WASH coordination platform analyzes relevant data to estimate the PIN number

There are no exact methodology for PIN calculation, but the two below approaches can be advised, depending on the country:

1) In data-rich countries (generally with household-level data with broad coverage)

  • Identify key indicators (up to five/six, including WASH, Nutrition, Health and other relevant indicators).
  • Identify thresholds for moderate PIN and acute PIN (for example less than 15 l/p/d = PIN; less than 10 l/p/d = acute PIN).
  • Calculate PIN based on proportion of households that are above the agreed threshold(s) in a given area.

2) In data-poor countries (no household-level data with broad coverage)

  • Identify key indicators (up to five/six, including WASH, Nutrition, Health and other relevant indicators).
  • Build a severity scale for each indicator.
  • Calculate average severity for a given area.

  • Apply arbitrary percentages for each severity scale (for example, provinces rating 1 or 2 = no PIN; provinces rating 3, PIN = 15% of the total population; provinces rating 4, PIN = 25% of total population, etc.).

In some case it can be also relevant to consider for WASH PIN calculation only the people in need of key sectors for a specific emergency (for instance Food Security in case of drought, Health in case of outbreak). In that case, use these key sector's PIN figures as starting point, and identify which of these people are also in need of WASH interventions. 

Expand the 'field examples' folder on top of this page for some examples of PIN calculation at country level

Regardless of the methodology used to calculate the PIN, coordination platform should ensure a transparent process and document it, so it can be later explained and replicated.