Evolution of the Sahana Open Source Project

Evolution of the Sahana Open Source Project III International Meeting on ICT for Development Cooperation March 1 st to 2 nd 2010, Gijón, Spain Chamindra de Silva (Sri Lanka) SAHANA, Director and CTO VIRTUSA, Head of Strategic Initiatives, GTO http://chamindra-de-silva.blogspot.com [email_address]

Agenda
The Problem Domain
The Need for IT for Disaster Management
Applying of Humanitarian Principles to FOSS
How Sahana was applied for various Governments around the world
Designing Resilient Systems in the Environment of a Disaster
Partnering in a Diverse Global Community

Defining: What is a Disaster? “ A disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a society, causing widespread human, material or environmental losses w hich exceeds the ability of the affected society to cope using only its own resources” Source:UNDP

The Historic Trigger: Tsunami 2004 26 December 2004
At least 226,000 dead
Up to 5 million people lost homes, or access to food and water
1 million people left without a means to make a living
At least $7.5 billion in the cost of damages

Disasters Coordination Who Responds to Disasters? 10s of Orgs 100s of Orgs 1000s – 1 Mill Government Relief Local Authorities, Police, Army, Fire fighters, + Authorized coord + Well trained + Accountable +/- Big picture relief (e.g. national security) - Procedures create bottlenecks - Overloaded Local Relief Spontaneous volunteers, corporate village communities, friends and family + first responders + lot of capacity + instant aid - not trained - focus unknown - not accountable UN, NGOs Red Cross, OCHA, CARE, WHO, Sarvodaya, etc + focused on people + trusted to accept aid +/- less well trained + accountable - Donor driven - narrow focus / fragmented - sometimes competing Victims Effective Collaboration and Coordination! Relief

Typical Coordination Problems
Tracing Missing People
Coordinating Who is doing What Where?
Tracking Displaced Families
Collaborative and live Incident Mapping
Aid Logistics Management
Scalable Alerting
Data Collation , Calculation and Reporting
Automated Messaging to the Public
“ Every Second Counts” => Decision Needs to be made Rapidly

Explaining the complexity of DM Well defined Response Process Well defined Information Flows Well Trained Responders Situation Awareness in Normal Emergency Management Information Information Situation Awareness Act Decide

Disasters Creates Information Chaos
Government & Emergency Services relief capacity has been exceeded or crippled
So is their ability to manage information
A scale of information that needs to be gathered and shared is overwhelming
Information from non-traditional “uninitiated” sources means different terminology / processes
Decision Makers need to analyze a vast amount of data to respond effectively

Coordinating in Disaster Management Multiple Disparate Information Sources Information Overload Large delta to reality Diverse Responders Relief workers, Volunteers Multiple Parallel independent Processes Information Information Situation Awareness?? Act Information Information Information Decide

How Does I.T. Help?
Scalable management of information
No stacks of forms, lose papers to manage
Data Collation , Calculation and Reporting
Detailed analysis of data in different forms for different roles
Fewer bottlenecks on Information Sharing
Empowers responders with Information
Live Visualizations for making sense of data
Maps, Charts, Filters, Word Maps, Drill Downs
IT Improves Manageability ( I α H x V / M )

How Can I.T. Fail in a disaster
Comms are saturated or is not accessible
Low throughput environment
Work disconnected
Flexibility and fault tolerant
Mobile/Portable, run on Ubiquitous systems
Has to be accessible to users/developers
Intuitive, Simple Design, Localized, Customizable
Interoperate easily with other systems
Support standards (e.g. excel)

Thus the Sahana Project
What is it?
A free & open source portable web tool
Modular Sub-applications to address th e common Disaster Management probs
RAD platform for DM
Main Goals
Bring Efficiencies to Disaster Coordination and Prompt Response
Facilitate the effective information exchange between responders and beneficiaries
Primary focus is to help victims

The First Community (Sri Lankan IT)
“We just wanted to help our countrymen”
We used our skills to provide a tool
Operational model - “Chaos”
400 IT volunteers
1 st week 24hr development
Major releases almost daily
Disparate Applications
Missing Person Registry, Organization Registry, Request management System, Camp Registry

The Flow Sri Lanka IT Community Sahana Software Builds Tsunami 2004 IT Community = LSF + LKLUG + IT Industry + Academia Urgent Requirements

Deployed in CNO, Sri Lanakan Gov

Mod 1: Tracking Missing People
Shared Bulletin Board of lost / found
Computer based search heuristics
Tracking Family units
Analyzing networks of connections
The Missing People Registry helps track and find missing, people

Mod 2: Who is doing What , Where?
Registry of operating relief organizations
Coverage of Services
Self-Allocation and Reporting
Contact Information
The Organization Registry helps maintain data (contact, services, region, etc) of organizations groups and volunteers working in the disaster

Mod 3: Matching Aid Requests
Estimating Needs
Matching Aid to Ground Needs
Inventories/Catalog
Quantities
Expiration dates
Re-order levels
Tracking Allocation
The Request Management System tracks all requests and helps match pledges for support, aid and supplies to fullfilment

Integrated GIS / Mapping Mapping of
Hazards / Incidents
Shelters (IDPs)
(field) Hospitals
Organizations
Responders
The Shelter Registry helps track data on all shelters setup following the Disaster

Lessons Learned at end of Phase I
IT was invaluable to address the coordination problems in a disaster
The is a lot of capacity you can harness from your local ICT community for disaster response
BUT
Try NEVER to build a disaster management system from scratch during a disaster!!

Inspired the Second Phase of Sahana Objectives
Build a scalable disaster management sys
Develop Sahana application framework
Develop Initial set of core applications
Make it Open Source and take it global
LSF Core team was funded by SIDA for one year

Sahana Phase II LSF Team Sahana Phase II FOSS Software Builds A Global Need (2005) LSF Team = “ Techies” and FOSS Enthusiasts Requirements + SIDA Funds

Alignment to Humanitarian Values
Freely Available to deploy
No discrimination on access (Red Cross CC #2)
Ability to “leave technology behind” (RC CC #6)
Rapid customization to actual needs w ith code
L10N and integration (RC CC #5)
Building local capacities & self-reliance (RC CC #6)
Open system => Transparent and trustworthy
Better acceptance than “foreign” proprietary systems
Countries/NGOs can collaborate to develop
Get the best minds from the world to participate in building the software
This should be a global public good
Build on each others work by including it in project
Called Humanitarian-FOSS or H-FOSS

An FOSS License is not enough
Just delivering it under an Open Source license is insufficient to make it a global public good
YOU ALSO NEED
To build a rich community supporting it
Govern intellectual property & Processes
Make it accessible to new developers
Provide channels to get user feedback

Initial Development Model
LSF: R&D Open Source Non-Profit
Lightweight Software Engineering Project team with Open Source community participation and advocacy
REASON
Had to deliver on a timeliness and deliverable of a funded SIDA project
We had to have an initial “complete” app to attract community participation
e.g. Open Office, Mozilla

The community + FOSS cycle LSF + Global Community Sahana Software Builds & Refines Attracts & Grows 2006

The Community Spreads Coorporation: Emergency Management / Humanitarian, Academics, Users and FOSS Developers
Academia: UoColombo (SL), UoMoratuwa (SL), Trinity College (US), Uo Maryland (US), ISCRAM Public / Non-Profit: BHEPP, NYC, LSF/SF Private: IBM, Respere, AidIQ

Community Creates More Modules

Innovation from the Community Portable App Portable Devices + Synchronization SMS / Geolocation / GIS Standards

This cycle spawns new communities LSF + Global Community Sahana Software Builds & Refines Attracts & Grows 2007 Spawns

Lessons Learned at end Phase II
Open Source is a fantastic vehicle for global collaboration on innovation
Common multi-lateral problem domains
The open source community coupled with the humanitarian spirit is a tremendous catalyst
The meeting of two powerful volunteer communities
BUT Bazaar development can be Chaotic
Different cultures, standards, motives

It continues.. forged in the fire Sahana Community Sahana Software Builds & Refines Incident or Dire Need Attracts & Grows Urgent Requirements

Some Incidents we Responded to
Gov-NADRA, for Asian Quake in Pakistan – 2005
Officially deployed and integrated to NADRA (Pakistan Government) to track all victims
Gov, Mudslide Disaster in Philippines – 2006
Officially deployment to track all victims with by Philippines Government + pre-deployment
Yogjarkata Earthquake, Indonesia – 2006
Deployed by ACS, Indonesian Reliefsource
NYC prepardness in US – 2007
New york city evacuation management
Gov, Earthquake, Peru – 2007
Gov, Shizuan Earthuake in China – 2008
Deployed by Police to reunite families
Sahana Downloaded overs 25,000 times

Some Deployments Screenshots

Sahana Variants in Haiti Right now

Lessons Learned on Deployment
An influential Relief partners is key
On the ground knowledge of needs
Build resilient systems (=> simple, flexible)
Or prepare for situations of failure
Support popular Standards for sharing data
Excel will prevail as a standard
Partner to prevent silos of data
Create spaces for online collaboration
IRC, Situation Room Blogs, Mailing Lists

Sahana Foundation is formed - 2009
501(c)(3) non-profit foundation
Regulated by US laws for non-profits
Membership based organization (meritocracy)
Global Governance of the Sahana Project
Manage Intellectual Property
Officially represent and sign partnerships
Provide a vehicle for funding Sahana
Manage Public / Private Partnerships
Manage multiple Sahana Projects
SahanaPy, Sahana L10N, Sahana Standards

New Sahana Projects: SahanaPy
SahanaPy
Python
CRUD / REST
Standards
DVI
Hospital MS
Food RP

New Projects: Sahana Translation
Open Collaboration
Translator community
Disaster terminology
Languages
Sinhalese, Tamil
Spanish, Chinese, etc
French, Kreyol
Domain variants (NIMS, Humanitarian)

New Projects: Sahana Standards
Building on W3C EIIF XG
A pilot to explore domain
Disaster terminology
Standard Areas
GIS Standards GeoRSS, KML, etc
Alerting Standards CAP, TSML
Domain Standards PFIF

In Conclusion
Sahana was and continues to be forged in the fire (it keeps it very real)
The FOSS benefits align to humanitarian values very well
Sahana is Neutral A-Political project to promote international partnership on FOSS DM solutions

Collaboration is key to Resilience “ In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed” - Charles Darwin Disasters don't respect Country Boundaries or Jurisdictions

Let's Cooperate! Join us in taking Sahana to the next level Join the Sahana Global Community! http://www.sahanafoundation.org [email_address] [email_address]

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Evolution of the Sahana Open Source Project

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