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Prepositioning relief items has been a preparedness measure set up by many humanitarian organisations all over the globe to be better prepared to respond to disasters in country.

However, this prepositioning exercise is still very much done in the silo of each agency that are not talking to each other’s to take into consideration what other agencies around them might already be prepositioning, nor where.

This leads to a pre-positioning situation which lacks coordination and overall coherence regarding what items are stored, where and in which quantities.

This lack of coherence is later translated and apparent during the response phases where some items are not available enough, or too much, or, paradoxically, not in the appropriate location for the very measure of prepositioning to effectively make a difference in regards to the time and costs required to transport the available items where they are in fact needed.