Sahana FOSS Disaster Management System

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Sahana
Developer(s) Lanka Software Foundation
Stable release 0.6.2.2 / 03/04/2009
Written in PHP, Javascript, Perl, HTML
Operating system Cross-platform
Platform Apache, MySQL
Available in English - Language packs available for v.0.6.2.2 for Arabic, Bahasa Indonesian, Bengali, Burmese, Simplified Chinese, English/UK, English/US, German, Hindi, Portuguese & Portuguese/Brazil, Russian, Sinhala, Spanish, Spanish/Latin America, and Tamil.
Type Disaster Management System
License LGPL
Website www.sahana.lk
Free software portal

The Sahana Free and Open Source Disaster Management System was conceived during the 2004 Sri Lanka tsunami. The system was developed to help manage the disaster and was deployed by the Sri Lankan government's Center of National Operations (CNO), which included the Center of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA). A second round of funding was provided by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). The project has now grown to become globally recognized, with deployments in many other disasters such as the Asian Quake in Pakistan (2005), Southern Leyte Mudslide Disaster in Philippines (2006) and the Jogjarkata Earthquake in Indonesia (2006).

Following the Tsunami, the system was rebuilt from scratch in Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl. The system is available for free for anyone to download and customize and is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

The Project is now being ported to Python (programming language) as an experimental fork SahanaPy so that the software can be extended.

Contents

[edit] Sahana Project Goals

The social goals of the Sahana project are:

  1. Primary: Help alleviate human suffering and help save lives through the efficient use of IT during a disaster
  2. Enhance collaboration between diverse set of actors from Government, Emergency Management, NGOs, INGOs, spontaneous volunteers and victims themselves in responding effectively to a disaster
  3. Empower the victims and their next of kin and better enable them to help themselves
  4. Protect victim data and reduce the opportunity for data abuse
  5. Provide a Free and Open Source solution end-to-end available to everyone

[edit] Functionality and features

The Sahana project aims to provide an integrated set of pluggable, Web-based disaster management applications that provide solutions to large-scale humanitarian problems in the relief phase of a disaster. Subsequent phases are planned to extend the scope to the prevention, rehabilitation and reconstruction phases.

The Sahana project currently has 8 mature modules that address common disaster coordination and collaboration problems. They are:

  • Missing Person Registry.
  • Organization Registry.
  • Request/Pledge Management System.
  • Shelter Registry.
  • Inventory Management.
  • Catalogue.
  • Situation Awareness.
  • Volunteer coordination.

Sahana can also be deployed with a small sub-set of these modules.

[edit] Main modules

[edit] Sahana Missing Person Registry

The Missing Person Registry is an online bulletin board of missing and found people. It captures information about the people missing and found, and also the information of the person seeking them.

[edit] Sahana Organization Registry

The Organization Registry is a collaborative “Who is doing what, where” tool which enables tracking of the relief organizations and other stakeholders working in the disaster region. It captures information about the places where each organisation is active and the range of services being provided.

[edit] Sahana Shelter Registry

This sub-application of Sahana keeps track of the location and basic data of all the shelters in the region. It also provides a geospatial view to plot the location of the camps in the affected area.

[edit] Sahana Request/Aid Management System

The Sahana Request/Aid Management System is a central online repository where all relief organizations, relief workers, government agents and camps can effectively match requests of aid and supplies to pledges of support. It tracks aid provision from request to fulfillment.

[edit] Sahana Volunteer Coordination System

The Volunteer Coordination System helps NGOs keep track of all their volunteers, their contact information, project allocation, availability and skills to help them allocate them effectively especially in a disaster.

[edit] Sahana Situation Awareness

This module gives an overview of the situation and allows people to add information on what is happening on the ground. It features the ability to plot a note and a photo with additional information on a Map, so that people can collaboratively capture the current disaster situation.

[edit] Technical Features

After the Tsunami, the Sahana system was rebuilt from scratch under the Free and Open Source technology stack, LAMP. The new architectural framework provides the following features:

  • Plugin Architecture: Allows for the independent development modules by 3rd party groups easy whilst making integration simple
  • Portable USB: Can run without installation from a USB drive as a Portable Application where the program and code is contained in the USB flash drive
  • Localization Ready: Allows for the system to be translated into any language.
  • Granular Security: Access Control can be specified by role, module and action performed
  • Adaptable User Interface: Allows for the look and feel of the system to adapt to the device that views it and it can be viewed through a PDA

[edit] Flexible deployment strategy

The Sahana system can be deployed on a variety of models, ranging from operating totally within a single notebook computer (with or without a portable Wireless LAN) to a fully distributed, networked platform.

[edit] Large-scale deployment

Often the disaster coordination hub is far from the affected region, making network-based operation possible even though the affected region might have their telecommunications infrastructure destroyed. Access can be provided in the affected region with the support of groups such as Ericsson who provide satellite-based wireless LAN connectivity to networks.

[edit] Lightweight deployment

If such infrastructure does not exist, Sahana, being a “lightweight” solution, can efficiently scale down to a standalone laptop and a secured portable wireless access point for short-range network collaboration. Such a requirement is often the case in a disaster coordination hub when there is no Internet or power during the initial moments post-disaster. The Sahana system has been tested to work with the above equipment at about 130W, which can be easily supported by a solar panel should power not be available. Additionally none of the applications depends on being connected to the Internet.

Sahana also has the ability to synchronize data between multiple instances of Sahana. This allows for responders or district offices to capture data on victims in the field and seamlessly exchange the data with the other field offices, headquarters or responders, using USB flash drives or CDs.

Past Deployments

  • Tsunami - Sri Lanka 2005 - Officially deployed in the CNO for the Government of Sri Lanka
  • AsianQuake - Pakistan 2005 - Officially deployed with NADRA for the Government of Pakistan
  • Southern Leyte Mudslide Disaster - Philippines 2006 - Officially deployed with the NDCC and ODC for the Government of Philippines
  • Sarvodaya - Sri Lanka 2006 - Deployed for Sri Lanka's largest NGO
  • Terre des Hommes - Sri Lanka 2006 - Deployed with new Child Protection Module
  • Yogjakarta Earthquake - Indonesia 2006 - Deployed by ACS, urRemote and Indonesian whitewater association and Indonesian Rescue Source
  • Peru Earthquake - Peru 2007 - Deployed and localized into Spanish.
  • Myanmar Cyclone - Myanmar 2008- Currently working in progress to deploy and localize into Burmese.

[edit] Historic Trigger

The tsunami that hit Sri Lanka on December 26, 2004, resulted in a massive outpouring of support for the relief of the nearly one million people that it affected. When literally thousands of people from every conceivable multilateral organization and from all over the world arrived to help, it became clear immediately that without information technology it would be impossible to coordinate their efforts to maximize the impact on the affected people. The Sahana project was born as an important lesson learnt in the aftermath.[1]

[edit] Sahana Structure

The Sahana organization structure includes a Sahana board, a Project Management Committee (PMC), Committers and the larger Community. The description of each is given below:

  • Board of Directors - The Sahana Board is responsible for sustaining and promoting the adoption and growth of the Sahana. The Sahana Board will actively seek to engage with private sector, academic institutions and public sector partners in promoting the adoption and support of Sahana. The Sahana Board will establish a mechanism for evaluating the success of Sahana deployments and for capturing issues about Sahana development and implementation.
  • Project Management Committee (PMC) - The role of the Project Management Committee (PMC) is to ensure that the community is behaving and governing itself in a manner that is consistent with the objectives of making Sahana a successful open source project. This includes operational, legal and procedural oversight on Sahana releases
  • Committers - Committers are those individuals who have gained the trust of the main contributors to Sahana and have direct access to contribute to the code, documentation or other Sahana resources.
  • Community - The largest group in Sahana consists of the larger community of about 200+ people helping to promote, provide feedback and apply Sahana
  • Sponsors - The organizations and groups that keep us operational and running by donating funds, infrastructure and resources

[edit] Humanitarian-FOSS Community

Sahana also spawned a concept and community founded by a humanitarian consultant, Paul Currion, and the Sahana project lead, Chamindra de Silva, based on the more generic ideals of Humanitarian-FOSS where the ideals of FOSS are applied for building humanitarian-ICT applications or applications built to help alleviate human suffering. The community consists of a mailing list and a WIKI with membership reaching 250+ Emergency Management practitioners, Humanitarian Consultants, Crisis Management Academics and Free and Open Source developers from around the world. Domain representation in this group includes members from ISCRAM, UNDP, Red Cross, IBM, Saravodaya (largest NGO in Sri Lanka), Australian Fire Services, etc.

The concept has also been recognized specifically by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), where it inspired a new FSF Award for Projects of Social Benefit, which is broader in coverage than humanitarian-FOSS and by the UNDP IOSN on their Humanitarian-FOSS Portal.

[edit] Research

The project has also spurred research in diverse areas. Professor Louiqa Raschid, University of Maryland also the current Chair of the Sahana board, is leading/guiding the team in Sahana and Disaster Management research. Sahana has been presented at numerous conferences/workshops/events and already has one paper accepted for an international conference.

Research plays an important role in Sahana due to lack of previous research in ICT for Disaster Management. See Sahana Research WIKI for a comprehensive list of Sahana publications/presentations and research efforts.

[edit] Recognition & Awards

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ ""A Brief History of Sahana"". http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanitarian-ict/message/2887. Retrieved 2007-03-08. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahana_FOSS_Disaster_Management_System"