New modelling tool unveiled to support enhanced vaccination planning in humanitarian crises

Researchers develop a new tool to help with vaccination decision making in crisis scenarios.

Researchers from the Jameel Institute at Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) have developed the Jameel Institute Crisis Vaccination Planner, an early-stage modelling and decision-support tool designed to help inform evidence-based vaccination decisions in crisis settings.

In humanitarian emergencies, disruption to health systems often results in the collapse of routine immunisation, leaving populations vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases. Identifying which diseases pose the greatest immediate risk, and when outbreaks are likely to occur, is one of the most complex challenges faced by humanitarian responders.

The Jameel Institute Crisis Vaccination Planner is an output of Jameel Institute-Realtime Intelligent Support for Emergencies (Jameel Institute-RISE), a collaboration between the Jameel Institute and LSHTM, and supported by Community Jameel, that integrates real-time data, outbreak analytics, and predictive modelling to support partner organisations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). Its mission is to make complex analytical methods more accessible for operational teams on the ground while also identifying the critical data gaps that limit effective humanitarian response. 

The planner  integrates real-time data, epidemiological modelling, and scenario forecasting to help humanitarian actors prioritise vaccination efforts based on risk and potential health impact. The tool is designed to help build more reliable estimates of immunity around the world and better understand the risks from different vaccine-preventable diseases.

Instead of giving exact predictions during an active outbreak, the planner aims to identify what is needed to improve future vaccination planning – reducing outbreak size, delaying transmission and offering a dynamic framework for planning and evaluating interventions. By combining information on pre-crisis immunisation coverage, population demography, and immunisation disruptions, the tool can assist in projecting outbreak risks for diseases such as measles, diphtheria and pertussis.

Applying the Jameel Institute Crisis Vaccination Planner for the first time, the team will be working with data from the ongoing conflict in Gaza, Palestine to model how varying levels of immunisation disruption could influence the timing and scale of potential outbreaks.

Dr Bhargavi Rao, co-lead of Jameel Institute-RISE and clinical associate professor at LSHTM, said: “Crises like Gaza or Tigray highlight how quickly health systems can collapse and how vital it is to use data to guide action. The Crisis Vaccination Planner helps us turn uncertainty into invaluable insight, enabling humanitarian actors to make faster, evidence-based decisions that can save lives.”

Dr Oliver Watson,co-lead of Jameel Institute-RISE and lecturer at Imperial College London, said: “Our goal is to make complex modelling accessible and operational. The JICVP is a starting point for that conversation. By understanding the limits of current data and methods, we can work with partners to design the next generation of tools that truly support responders on the ground.”

This pilot marks the start of a co-design phase. The Jameel Institute-RISE team is working with humanitarian partners to ensure the tool reflects operational realities and to identify the data and analytical improvements needed to make anticipatory vaccination planning more feasible. .During this period, the Jameel Institute Crisis Vaccination Planner will be trialed and co-designed in collaboration with humanitarian partners, including  WHO, MSF and UNOCHA to ensure the final tool meets the operational needs of these actors on the ground.

Last month, the Jameel Institute-RISE hosted a symposium at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 2025 meeting in Toronto. With a focus on bridging academia and humanitarian response, the session explored how modelling and real-time analytics can support crisis decision-making. Within this wider discussion of the initiative’s research agenda, the planner was previewed as one element of ongoing co-design with operational partners.

Looking ahead, the tool will evolve to incorporate disease surveillance performance metrics, enabling users to assess how detection capacity shapes outbreak response timelines. By combining innovative modelling with close engagement from humanitarian organisations, the planner represents a step toward a more transparent, data-driven and equitable approach to protecting at-risk populations in crisis settings. 

To view the Jameel Institute Crisis Vaccination Planner, please click HERE.