1. www.sahana.lk
The Sahana FOSS
Disaster Management Project
.
CTO
Using ICT for Effective Disaster Management Forum
Asia Forum 2006, Sri Lanka
26th - 28th June 2006
Chamindra de Silva,
Project Lead, Sahana
Acting Executive Director, Lanka Software Foundation
chamindra@opensource.lk, chamindra@gmail.com
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Objective
●
Scope:
– A Humanitarian-IT Innovation Case Study:
The Sahana, Free and Open Source Disaster
Management Project and Initiative
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A Case Study on:
– how IT can be applied to bring significant
efficiencies in coordination and collaboration of
relief in disasters
– how Free and Open Source Software and
communities can be applied to create
partnerships to deliver public IT goods
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The Sahana Project
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What is it?
– A Web based portal with
sub-applications built to
address the common
disaster coordination
and collaboration
problems in a disaster
– between civil society, Gov,
private sector, volunteers
and the victims themselves
●
Value
– Empower all relief groups with structured info
– Improve overall effectiveness / efficiency of relief
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Scope of Use
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“Large Scale Disasters”
– When local incident / emergency management
infrastructure is also destroyed or relief
overwhelms existing EM resources
− When 100s of NGOs and foreign aid groups
arrive simultaneously to help the relief effort
− When there are multiple 1000s of parallel and
independent relief tasks to coordinate
− Front line responders are not experienced in
crisis management
− First responders are the victims themselves
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Some Design Principles
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“Forged in the fire”
– Tsunami, Asian Quake, Mudslide
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Humanitarian - A focus on the victims
– First responders are victims and families
– Empower victims as much as possible
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KISS and Intuitive
– Lowest common denominator of collaboration
– Sparseness of data during crisis situations
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Self-organizing systems
– Community focused & reduce C&C bottlenecks
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Has to be free end-to-end (LAMP)
– Reduce restrictions for deployment
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Finding Missing People
The trauma caused by
waiting to be found or to
find the next of kin
“Please, please help me find
my missing parents / child /
relative”
IT Solution
– A centralized online bulletin board of victims
– Be able to record all structured meta data on a
victim (inc pictures and biometric data)
– Indexing and Searching of all data ( “sounds like” )
– Finding people through cross-referencing
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The People Registry helps track and find missing,
deceased, injured and displaced people and families
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Coordinating Relief
Coordinating all aid groups
and helping them to operate
effectively as one
“ Who is doing what where?! ”
“ How can we balance the
coverage of support to all
affected regions “
IT Solution
– A registry of all groups operating in the region with information
on the services provide and the team deployed
– A contact list of orgs and the services they provide
– Reporting to ensure a balanced distribution and coverage of
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services and relief groups

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The Organization Registry helps maintain data
(contact, services, region, etc) of organizations
groups and volunteers working in the disaster
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Matching Donations to
Actual Needs
Managing the multitude of requests from the
affected region and matching them effectively
to the pledges of assistance
“We need x number of tents not clothes!”
“We have medical supply x, how many do you need
and where can we send them”
IT Solution
– System to coordinate and effectively
“trade” the requests from the field to
donations and pledges of support
– Transparency of donation utilization,
10 tracking fulfillment details

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The Request Management System tracks all requests and
helps match pledges for support, aid and supplies to fullfilment
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Tracking all temporary
shelters
Tracking the location of all temporary
shelters, camps etc
“No aid is being sent to this village, they have
forgotten us as we are off the beaten path”
“Where are all these temporary shelters and camps
and shelters located? how do I contact them?”
●
The Required Solution
– A System that tracks temporary shelters/camps
setup after the disaster with GPS coordinates,
contact info, services in the shelter, etc
– Sstatistics on the distribution of victims in the region
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The Camp Registry helps track data on all
temporary shelters setup following the Disaster
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Other Modules / Features
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Other modules
– Inventory Management System / Catalog
System
– Child protection (Terre des Hommes)
– Volunteer management
– CAPs Client (templating)
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“Plug and play” module architecture
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L10N features
– translation, location hierarchy & locations
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Accessibility
– Major browsers, PDAs (XHTML/CSS/AJAX)
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LiveCD, LiveUSB versions
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Sample Deployment Model
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Centralized for authorized coordinators
– Inter-connected through the Internet
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Data collection distributed
– Paper Forms, other manual means
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Data entry distributed or centralized
– Can be done with volunteers
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Why is FOSS a good
Alternative?
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No restrictions to deploy and modify
– No time to check for royalties, license costs, etc
– L10N and integration with existing ICT resources
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Many countries cannot afford or do not invest
– Budgeting for a disaster that may or may not happen
– This should be a shared public good ( part invest )
– But loads of passionate volunteers
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Open system => Transparent and trustworthy
– Better acceptance than “foreign” proprietary systems
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FOSS community/contribution model
– The FOSS community model evolves partnerships
through natural selection of value provided
– NGOs, Academia, Corporate, NPOs, Sponsors,
16 Government, Individuals....

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Sahana Deployment
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CNO, for Tsunami in Sri Lanka – 2005
– Officially deployed and track 26,000 families
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NADRA, for Asian Quake in Pakistan – 2005
– Officially deployed and integrated to NADRA
(Pakistan Government) to track all victims
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For Landslide disaster in Philippines– 2005
– Officially deployment to track all victims with by
Philippines Government + pre-deployment
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Pre-deployment in Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka
– Customization for Sahana requirements
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Pre-deployed independently in Australia
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Currently being deployed in Indonesia
17 – ACS, uRemote, Indonesian Teams

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Case Study 1: Sahana
Tsunami, Sri Lanka
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Implementation:
– Development by 80+ volunteers in 3-4 weeks
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Used as official data center by:
– Center of National Operation
– CHA (NGO coordination authority)
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Results
– 26,000+ families tracked in people registry
– Modules user: Organization registry, Request
management, missing person
– Positive response (CNO and CHA etc)
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Lessons Learned
– The main collaboration problems faced during
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Case 2: Sahana in Pakistan
Asian Quake
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Implementation:
– Customization of Phase I (L10N) for Pakistan
by Sahana team and then NADRA
– LiveCD release
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Results
– Authorized by the Government
– Adopted by NADRA within their infrastructure
– Positive feedback from Gov
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Lessons Learned
– Disaster coordination is often centralized away
from the heart of the disaster (e.g. Islamabad)
– Early authorization by Government is crucial
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– Governments are sensitive to sharing data

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Case 3: Sahana in
Philippines Mudslide
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Implementation:
– Phase II localized, customized and remote
deployed
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Results
– Authorized by the Government
– Positive feedback from Gov
– MPR, OR, CR, RMS
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Lessons Learned
– Pre-Deployment with localization is very
valuable
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Sahana Impact
"the NDCC and OCD value SAHANA's contribution to
the relief and rehabilitation phases of the Southern
Leyte landslides and recognize the tremendous boost
to our preparedness for future disasters”
“while SAHANA cannot solve all the problems in a
disaster, it is an excellent tool to create registries that
can provide timely and reliable information on missing
persons, donated goods and services, camp locations,
and the like. It's technology that can help many
people in a disaster. In fact, there is no greater
innovation that matters more than that which
saves lives."
Avelino J. Cruz, Jr.
Secretary of National Defense, Philippines
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Case 4: Sahana pre-
deployment for Australia ES
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Implementation:
– Pre-deployed independently on windows OS
by Humanitarian ICT member
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Results
– Not yet
– Approaching the use for Emergency Services
(e.g. NSW Fire Brigade)
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Lessons Learned
– Gaps in system to cater as a Emergency
Management System
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Multiple incidents / events
– Promote integration to existing EM systems
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Case 5: Sahana for
Sarvodaya
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Implementation:
– Phase II heavily customized, localized and
deployed for Sarvodaya
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Results
– Deployed for HIH (Hazard information hub)
– Camp registry, inventory management,
volunteer coordination, trainer registry, CAP
client (templating)
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Lessons Learned
– IT literacy and training required
– Improve intuitiveness of interface
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Some other Learning Points
& Actions
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Empowering the victims and volunteers
through pervasive technology
– SMS alerts and public SMS info modules (in
development )
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Formation of Data Silos during disasters
– Data import from CSV spreadsheets
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Distributed deployment
– P2P data exchange using web services
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Sahana Recognition
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Humanitarian
– Software 2006, CA USA Good Samaritan
Award
– One of top 3 Finalists in it's category in the
Stockholm Challenge 2006
– BBC Documentary “Code Breakers”
showcases the Sahana project
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FOSS
– New Free Software Foundation (FSF) award
for “Social Benefit” inspired by Sahana
– Sourceforge Project of the Month - June 2006
– User Award from Redhat Sumit
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A Global Partnership!
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Incubation by SL IT Industry
– ICTA, Virtusa, JKCS, hSenid, Eurocenter, etc
– UoC, UoM, SLIIT
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Development and Community
– Project founded and run by LSF
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6 fellowships + 8 internships (UoC, UoM)
– Humanitarian-ICT community of 70+
EM/Humanitarian practitioners, academic, FOSS
(Mainly Sri Lanka, UK, NZ, Aus, US, Thailand)
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Sponsors ( the best type! )
– Main sponsorship by SIDA
– Other sponsorships: UCSC, NSF, IBM, Google
– Promoted and deployed by IBM Crisis team
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Upcoming Enhancements
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Pandemic Enhancements
– Bio-surveillance
– Drug data module (who has what where)
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SMS Alerting and Query
– Empowering the victims and families with
pervasive technologies
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Situation Awareness
– GIS based shared situation summary
– Shared and filtered messaging
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Connector Tech/Legal/Social framework
– Automate information flows
– Emergency data exchange standards
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Interested.. Join Us!
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As a FOSS project everyone is welcome to
contribute :-)
– Contribute to humanitarian requirements
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humanitarian-ict@yahoogroups.com
– Contribute to Sahana development
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http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/sahana
– Contribute by helping us to pre-deploy in your
country for government and NGOs
– Contribute just by using it and giving us
feedback
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Thank You
Questions & Feedback?
For more information
www.sahana.lk
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sahana
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