It is a vital part of post-disaster emergency rescue for research on emergency materials demand forecasting. To systematically investigate the current research situation of emergency material demand forecasting, we have consulted a large number of domestic and foreign references, prediction methods commonly like the case reasoning method, neural network method and grey system prediction method used in emergency material demand forecasting research, and the above method's respective advantages and disadvantages and applicable conditions were discussed and analyzed. Finally, we proposed the key research directions in recent years. The results showed that it is significant for post-disaster relief to further study emergency material demand forecasting in diversification, accuracy and intelligence. Thus, this paper looks forward to the future development direction and research focus of emergency material demand forecasting, which has a certain reference value for the future research of emergency material demand forecasting and the establishment of an emergency rescue system