Abstract. Anticipatory Action (AA) has become a central pillar
of contemporary humanitarian action, aiming to reduce the impacts of
climate-related hazards by enabling preventive interventions before
crises fully materialize. Food insecurity projections play a critical
role in AA, particularly in the context of droughts. Two internationally
operating systems, FEWS NET and the Integrated Food Security Phase
Classification (IPC), provide widely used assessments and projections of
food insecurity. Practitioners are often required to choose between
these frameworks when designing AA trigger systems, a challenge that was
recently amplified by USAID funding disruptions and the temporary outage
of FEWS NET, highlighting the vulnerability of critical humanitarian
data streams and the need for informed substitution. This study presents
a systematic spatiotemporal comparison and projection skill assessment
of FEWS NET and IPC food insecurity data for Somalia between 2017 and
2025. Using harmonized geospatial time series, we evaluate differences
in historical assessments and projections, the frequency of projected
crisis conditions, and projection accuracy relative to subsequent
current assessments. Results indicate strong agreement between the two
systems in their assessments of current conditions, but notable
divergence in projections: FEWS NET consistently projects slightly
higher levels of food insecurity and substantially more frequent
Emergency and Famine conditions than the IPC. Projection accuracy is
moderate for both systems and characterized by a predominance of
positive bias, particularly for higher food insecurity classes. This
reflects a precautionary forecasting approach that is appropriate in
humanitarian contexts but must be explicitly considered when defining
trigger sensitivity and resource allocation in anticipatory action.
Overall, the findings demonstrate that FEWS NET and IPC projections are
not directly interchangeable despite their shared classification scale,
underscoring the need for dataset-specific trigger calibration.
Reproducibility review available at: https://doi.org/10.53962/pdw8-n5v0