Sahana FOSS Disaster Management System

The Sahana Free and Open Source Disaster Management System is emergency management and disaster preparedness software developed by the Sahana Software Foundation. Conceived during the 2004 Sri Lanka tsunami to help manage the disaster, Sahana software was deployed by the Sri Lankan government's Center of National Operations (CNO), which included the Center of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA). Funding was provided by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). The project has grown, with deployments during other disasters such as the Asian Quake in Pakistan (2005), Southern Leyte Mudslide Disaster in Philippines (2006), the Jogjakarta Earthquake in Indonesia (2006) and the January 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Sahana currently has three projects: Eden, being developed in Python; Agasti, being developed in PHP; and the localization project, L10n.

Functionality

The Sahana project aims to provide a set of modular, web-based disaster management applications.

• Missing Person Registry: 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.
• Organization Registry: 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 organization is active and the range of services being provided.
• Request/Pledge Management System: An 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.
• Shelter Registry: Keeps track of the location and basic data of shelters in the region. It also provides a geospatial view to plot the location of the camps in the affected area.
• Inventory Management: Tracking the location, quantities, expiry of supplies stored for utilization in a disaster
• Situation Awareness: Gives an overview of the event 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.
• Volunteer coordination: Helps NGOs keep track of all their volunteers, their contact information, project allocation, availability and skills to help them distribute staff resources.

Sahana also includes tools for synchronization between multiple instances, allowing for responders or district offices to capture data on victims in the field and exchange the data with the other field offices, headquarters or responders.

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. The Sahana was created for information management and collaboration in the aftermath.^[1]

Humanitarian-FOSS Community

Sahana has developed into a community founded by a humanitarian consultant, Paul Currion, and the Sahana project lead, Chamindra de Silva. Much of their work is 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 an active wiki with membership including 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.

They have been recognized 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.^[2]

Research

The Sahana Project has resulted in independent research projects. Professor Louiqa Raschid of the University of Maryland is leading/guiding a team in Sahana and Disaster Management research.^[3]

Sahana has been presented at numerous conferences/workshops/events and already has one paper accepted for an international conference.^[4] A paper on Sahana and Disaster Management was accepted for the 2nd International Conference on Information and Automation 2006.^[5] Due to the lack of previous research in ICT for Disaster Management, research has played a key role in Sahana's development.^[6]

Sahana is also a participating project in Google Summer of Code, a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects.^[7][8]

Recognition & Awards

• Free Software Foundation Award for Social Benefit - March 2007
• BBC TV Documentary the "Code Breakers"
• The Codebreakers : Asia Pacific Development Information Programme : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
• Sourceforge Project of the Month - June 2006
• Software 2006 Good Samaritian Award
• Red Hat User Awards
• Stockholm Challenge Finalist

See also

• Sahana Eden

References

External links

• Main Sahana website
• Launchpad Code Repository