Sahana & Disaster Management Software: Past, Present & Future

Sahana & Disaster Management Software: Past, Present & Future What can we learn from the experience of professional disaster managers and humanitarian aid workers to build better humanitarian FOSS software Mark Prutsalis President, Globaliist Inc. Living-Prepared.com Sahana PMC March 25, 2009

Employers, Customers, Clients

NGOs

Refugees International

Rocky Mountain Institute

World Vision International

UN Agencies

UNHCR

UNICEF

UNJLC

US Government

Center of Excellence in Disaster Management & Humanitarian Assistance

US Navy’s Third Fleet

DARPA

Private Sector

Crisis Response Team (IBM)

IT Crisis Services

On Site Emergency Management Experience

Cambodia 1993 (elections)

Bosnia & Herzegovina 1993-94 (conflict)

Tanzania 1994 (refugees)

Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire 1994-96 (Great Lakes region refugee emergency & civil conflict)

Kenya, Southern Sudan, 1997 (OLS)

Mali 1997 (emergency response team training)

Central America 1998 (Hurricane Mitch)

East Timor 1999 (conflict)

Ecuador 1999 (volcano)

Turkey 1999 (earthquake)

Taiwan 2000 (emergency planning)

Gujarat, India 2000 (earthquake)

New York 2001 (9/11)

India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia 2004-05 (earthquake, tsunami)

Kashmir, Pakistan 2005 (earthquake)

City of New York 2004-08 (emergency planning)

Today’s Talk

Part 1 : History of Disaster Management Software

Early efforts (1993-2004)

Indian Ocean tsunami (2004-05)

Post-tsunami experience (2005-09)

Part 2 : the Present State of Sahana

Challenges of moving Sahana into a public stable 1.0 release

What 1.0 means for Sahana and the humanitarian community

Part 3 : the Future of Disaster Management Software

Mission critical functions that have yet to be developed: logistics

PART ONE

Personal History with

Disaster Management Software

Tanzania 1994

Estimated 200,000+ Rwandan Refugees enter Tanzania in a single day.

Turkey 1994

Kocaeli Earthquake and resulting influx of international donations of drugs and medical supplies cripple Turkish Ministry of Health’s ability to respond.

Organizing the Warehouse

Deploying the System

Commodity Tracking System Architecture for Turkish Ministry of Health

Affected Population: 16,972,606

Human Fatalities: 30,000 +

Injured Persons: 68,478

Destroyed Houses: 228,906

Damaged Buildings 397,538

Bhuj, India January, 2001 Gujarat Earthquake M7.9

The Mission: Logistics Management

Gujarat Earthquake Relief: Receipt, Packaging and Distribution of Supplies

Deploying CommTrack System: Ahmadabad, India, 7 February 2000

Cell phone towers still operating

Bachau, India,

5 February 2000

Bhuj, India

Bhuj Relief Warehouse

Our Pony Express

Anjar, India 13 February 2000

Semankyali Checkpoint, India

Adasar Checkpoint, India

The Indian Ocean Tsunami

India: Sunil Raghavan

India: Tsunami Management System: Victim Tracking, Logistics, Information System Open source, Linux Operating System, MYSQL Database

India: Warehouse Management

India: Logistics System

India: Information System

Sri Lanka

Person/Victim Registration System

Camp/Shelter Registration System

Request/Assistance Management System

Organization Registration System

Students configuring Sahana in Colombo

Sahana Training Provided by Crisis Response Team’s Dr. Tom Phelan

Indonesia

Banda Aceh

7 Days after tsunami

SIMBA

Sistem Informasi Manajemen Bencana Aceh (SIMBA)

Information Management System for Aceh Disaster

SIMBA First create a new POSKO, “double-click” on ‘Create new Posko’ Requirements meeting with Government Programming Team in Aceh

Secure Wireless Infrastructure System (SWIS) Installed in Banda Aceh and Teunom Crisis Response Team installs and adjusts wireless network communications hardware in Teunom camp Setting up SIMBA in Teunom SWIS was used in Indonesia to enter and transmit IDP (Internally Displaced Person) information. Previously, these records were hand written and sent by helicopter from Teunom to Banda Aceh .

Hurricane Katrina, 2005

Challenge: Nearly 50 Missing and Located Persons Registries (examples)

http://callhome.textamerica.com

http://www.karmus.com/photo/100350

http://neworleansrefugees.blogspot.com

http://picayunekatrina.blogspot.com

http://slidell.weblogswork.com

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/hurricanes/list

http://www.familylinks.icrc.org/katrina/locate

http://www.bergedalen.com/katrina/survived.aspx

http://homeport.uscg.mil/mycg/portal/ep/home.do

http://www.hurricanerefugee.com

http://www.katrinafinder.us

http://www.katrina-messages.org

http://connect.castpost.com

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9159961

http://nokr.org/nok/restricted/home.htm

http://www.tsasw.org/qso/healthandwelfare.asp

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/4202042.stm

http://208.137.136.144/phpbb2/viewforum.php?f=111

http://survivedkatrina.proboards54.com/index.cgi

http://www.katrinaconnections.com

http://www.hurricanekatrinasurvivors.com/main

http://www.wwltv.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=15

http://katrinacentral.com

http://katrinafamiliesandfriends.com

http://www.fullcircle.net

http://katrinaslost.com/connect

http://www.katrinaslost.com

http://neworleans.craigslist.org/laf

* Based on a full compilation as of Sept 2, 2005 at 8:30pm (list available)

Challenge: Duplicate Reporting 3595 registrations in just the letter “B”. Over 34,000 in total.

Recommendations

Information Sharing MOUs

Agreed data collection standards and formats

Identifying duplicate records & false records

Only one official Missing Persons site per disaster – one database

Sahana can fill this role

NYC Sahana Intake Based on Official Paper Forms

Kashmir Earthquake 2005

Kashmir Earthquake 2005 Maj. General Khalid Nawaz, GOC Muzaffarabad (GOC 12 DIV)

Balakot, Pakistan

60% loss of life

NYC Sahana Branch – 2007+

NYC Branch Staff Registration System

NYC Branch Site System

NYC Branch – GIS Integration

NYC Branch Shelteree Registration System Reporting

NYC Branch SANDS System

NYC Branch SANDS: Assigning Staff to Activated Sites

NYC Branch SANDS: Staff Management

NYC Branch SANDS: Tracking and Updating Staff Status

NYC Branch SANDS: Situation Awareness of Staffing

NYC Sahana Branch: Next Steps

More automation of business processes

More situational awareness reports (dashboard)

Logistics management for shelters and community distribution points

Development, support & maintenance from City University of New York (CUNY)

Merging NYC Branch features back into Sahana trunk

LESSONS LEARNED

Fully functional offline / standalone

Development priorities driven by emergency/disaster management domain experts

Stable, reliable, easy to install & run on Windows/IE

PART TWO

The Present State of Sahana:

Whither Sahana 1.0?

“ Sahana is not being utilized in Aus [Australia] at this time for fire evacuee and refugee management due to several fundamental considerations:

o Sahana is still in pre-release and thereby not demonstrably robust (hopefully rectified when Sahana 1.0 is released)

o Sahana is not easily installed on Microsoft Windows servers and notebooks

o Sahana is currently considered to be overly complex in terms of features and the complexities of deployment methodologies….”

- e-mail from Don Cameron, Sahana PMC member, 3/16/09

A call for Sahana 1.0 this year

Open Source = constant innovation, results in betas – “release often”

At odds with need for stable & reliable code that emergency managers can depend on to save lives

If Sahana wants to be “the disaster management software” it has to be stable & reliable.

Whither Sahana 1.0?

Sahana 1.0 Release Plan

Take a little longer than normal release schedule.

Clean up code

Fix all outstanding bugs

Rigorous bug test & QA

Professional packaging with installation/configuration scripts for windows, Linux, MAC OSX, Solaris, portable applets, etc.

Professional documentation for installation & end-users.

We need your help

We need developers to support the 1.0 release.

Activities & tasks are documents on wiki:

http://wiki.sahana.lk/doku.php?id=dev:strategic_plan_for_proposed_public_stable_release_of_sahana_1.0

It is not sexy work, but fulfilling. You will be part of team that will make Sahana 1.0 a reality.

Get involved. On Sahana-Maindev; IRC #sahana

Sahana 1.0 launches Sahana into Stratosphere

No, it won’t be in Python.

No, it won’t have all the bells and whistles planned for with the 0.7 and 0.8 releases and GSoC 2009 projects.

BUT – when next major sudden onset disaster strikes, no one will hesitate to recommend Sahana’s deployment.

PART THREE

The Future of Sahana and Disaster Management Software

Sahana needs a Logistics Management System

Emergency experience demonstrates need

No disaster management system is complete without it

“ Logistics efforts can account up to 80% of disaster relief spending and thus, efficient and effective logistics activities become crucial for successful humanitarian operations .” – ISCRAM 2009

Logistics