Thailand experienced serious flooding in 2011. The government faced considerable challenges in meeting the immediate and medium term needs of the affected populations, one of which was emergency shelter need of the affected population. This study explored the provision of emergency shelter management in Prathumthani province and Nonthaburi province following the floods in Thailand of July-December 2011, identified challenges in the disaster management systems in each province, and examined the perception of the shelter residents on shelter services and management in both provinces. Through in-depth interviews, data on shelter management at provincial level during the flood in 2011 were obtained from 10 and 9 key actors in Nonthaburi province and Prathumthani province, respectively. Focus group discussions were carried out among 75 shelter managers from Nonthaburi province and 66 from Prathumthani province to enquire data on shelter management during the flood in 2011. In addition, a total of 2,929 shelter residents aged 20 years and older participated in the perception survey, of which 1,572 participants were from Nonthaburi province and 1,357 participants from Prathumthani province. Data from in-depth interview and focus group discussions were analyzed using content analysis focusing on: 1) community participation, 2) planning, 3) human resource management, 4) managing volunteers, 5) management information systems, 6) commodity logistics management, 7) financial management, and 8) shelter services management. Additionally, the administrative performance was compared to the Sphere standards. T-test was used to compare mean perception scores between the two provinces for the key individual indicators of the Sphere minimum standards including WASH, food security and nutrition, shelter settlement and non-food items, and health actions; and analysis of variance was used to compare among large, medium, and small shelters. It was found that Nonthaburi provincial administrative authorities adopted a more directive approach, whereas in Prathumthani province administrative authorities assumed a supportive and coordination role and could not carry on through the entire period of the flood due to shortage of responsible human resources. A similar pattern was seen at shelter level management where perception point to a more structured but top-down approach in Nonthaburi province, whereas the latter adopted a more bottom-up approach but at times less structured. The constraints affecting effective actions on shelter management addressed in the study were less in Nonthaburi province than in Prathumthani province. According to the Sphere core standards, fair performance was observed for both provinces, for which small shelters had more limitations than large and medium shelters, in the exception of solid waste management and drainage. This could be resulted from damaged transportation system making it impossible for waste collecting trucks to collect waste at the shelters on a regular basis. Importantly, high volume of daily waste productions in large shelters worsen the situation. Although acceptable perception levels on shelter management and services provisions were observed in both provinces, higher mean scores of most indicators were generally found in Nonthaburi shelters in comparison to Prathumthani shelters. This evident was particularly evident for small shelters comparison between the two provinces. Within province comparison, mean scores of perception demonstrated consistent findings that small shelters' mean scores were significantly lower than large shelters, while insignificant difference were found between large and medium shelters. The findings clearly support the qualitative analysis results, showing better performance of Nonthaburi province than Prathumthani province. Nevertheless, shelters in both provinces seemed to face shortage of food for infants, small children, pregnant women, and breast feeding mothers. Among the four minimum humanitarian response standards, health services received the highest mean scores in both provinces, because high priority was often given to health actions in humanitarian response. In conclusion, consistent findings of qualitative and quantitative data analyses indicate that preparedness of emergency response system to shelter need integral with Sphere standards practices would lead to effective actions to emergency response. The findings is beneficial to the improvement of effective actions to emergency response to shelter need of individual provinces in the future.