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Talk by Chamindra De Silva at the Sahana Conference 2009, Colombo, Sri Lanka. March 24-25, 2009.
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Evolution of the SahanaSystem and Community
Sahana ConferenceMarch 24 2009, Sri Lanka
Chamindra de SilvaSAHANA, Director and First PMC Chair
VIRTUSA, Technology StrategistH-ICT Community Co-Founder
W3C EIIF XG Co-Chair
“In the long history of humankind (and animal
kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively
have prevailed”
- Charles Darwin
Agenda
Before Evolution... Environment? Sahana System & Community Interaction Mutation of Sahana so far..
Environment: What is a Disaster?
“A disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a society, causing
widespread human, material or environmental losses which
exceeds the ability of the affected society to cope using only its own
resources”
Source:UNDP
Some Disaster by Type and Impact
A more specific definition
UK Home Office Definition:
”Any Event or Circumstance (happening with or without warning) that causes or threatens
death or injury, disruption to the community on such a scale that the effects cannot be dealt
with by the emergency services, local authorities and other organizations as part of
their normal day today activities”
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 ReliefSpontaneous volunteers, corporate village communities, friends and family+ first responders+ lot of capacity+ instant aid- not trained- focus unknown- not accountable
UN, NGOsRed 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
Disasters Coordination
The Response Community
10s of Orgs 100s of Orgs 1000s – 1 Mill
Objectives of Disaster Management
Achieve survival of maximum number of people and suffering of the minimum Restore essential services ASAP Restore order to chaos Inform the public Coordinate Relief Provide a foundation for subsequent Recovery
Typical Problems Responders have work on.. Search And Rescue
Evacuation
Setting up Shelters
Effective Distribution of Aid
Management of Donars and Donations
Tracing Missing People
Trauma Counseling
Assuring Security of Affected Areas
Protecting Children
Rehabilitation
Live saving decisions need to be made very fast!The best decisions are the most informed ones
Situation Awareness
Defn: “Perception of the environment critical to decision-makers in complex and dynamic situations” Studies show, lack of SA has been identified as
one of the primary factors in accidents attributed to human error (Hartel, Smith, & Prince, 1991; Merket, Bergondy, & Cuevas-Mesa, 1997; Nullmeyer, Stella, Montijo, & Harden, 2005)
Important especially in high information flow, high consequential impact domains (lives at stake)
Air Traffic Control, Military Command and Control, Emergency Response, Disaster Management
SA in Emergency Management
Information
Information
SituationAwareness
Act
Decide
Well definedResponse
Process
Well definedInformation
Flows
Well TrainedResponders
Disaster => Unexpected info Sources
Government & Emergency Services relief capacity has been exceeded or crippled
To match relief capacity boundary of response effort extends to external groups (NGOs, Civil Society, Foreign Aid, UN)
Core Decision Makers need to consult a wider group for better situation awareness
Information has to be gathered from non-traditional “uninitiated” sources for better Situation Awareness
SA in Disaster Management
Information
Information
SituationAwareness??
Act
Information
Information
Information
Decide
Multiple DisparateInformation Sources
InformationOverload
Large delta to reality
Diverse RespondersRelief workers,
Volunteers
Multiple Parallel independent Processes
If you were to do it manually
Channels N(N-1)/2 = O(N2) Information Lost in relay
and propagation Redundant Data Collection Inconsistent Terminology Manual Collation /
Calculation Delayed Situation
Awareness
16
120
8
5
10
28
How Can I.T. Help?
Scalable management of information No stacks of forms and files to manage
Efficient distribution of information Accessibility of information on demand
Automatic collation and calculation No delay for assessments and calculations
Live Situation Awareness Reports are updated live as data goes in
IT Improves Manageability ( I α H x V / M )
Thus the Sahana Project
What is it? A free & open source
portable web tool Sub-applications designed
to address the common Disaster Management probs
A RAD platform 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 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
How Sahana Started
Sri LankaIT
Community SahanaSoftware
Builds
Tsunami 2004
Urgent Requirements
IT Community = LSF + LKLUG + IT Industry + Academia
The First Community
“We just wanted to help our countrymen” We used our skills to provide a tool
Operational model - “Chaos” 400 IT volunteers 1st week 24hr development Major releases almost daily
Applications Missing Person Registry, Organization
Registry, Request management System, Camp Registry
They Build it for the CNO
Independent Hazard Info. Center
Lessons Learned
Surprisingly no one had built such a system before!
The open source community coupled with the humanitarian spirit is a tremendous catalyst for change
BUT NEVER build a disaster management
system from scratch during a disaster again!!
Inspired the Second Phase of Sahana
Proposal 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 SahanaPhase IIFOSS
Software
Builds
A Global Need (2005)
Requirements+ SIDA Funds
LSF Team = “Techies” and FOSS Enthusiasts
“Plugin” / Platform Pattern
The Plugin / Modular Architecture pattern Enables evolutionary parallel development
“Survival of the fittest module” Consistent Base Platform for RAD
Themed UI, Support diverse multiple-clients Security, Data management, Error handling GIS, WS, Reporting Toolkits
Eg. Firefox, Symbian, Android, PHP, Eclipse
Framework and Platform Services
Core Module Core Module New Module New Module
Why we choose LAMP?
(L)AMP – (Linux) Apache MySQL PHP Free and Open Source end to end Lightweight (Process and Space) PHP is easy scripting language to pick up Rapid “natural” web app development PHP encourages stateless sessions =>
horizontally scalable LAMP Packages: WAMP, XAMPP
Who is doing What, Where & When?
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
Tracking Missing People / Casualties
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
Matching Aid to Ground Realities
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
Collaborative Situation Mapping
Collaborative Map of Hazards / Incidents Shelters (IDPs) (field) Hospitals Organizations Responders Stores etc
The Shelter Registry helps track data on all shelters setup following the Disaster
Initial Development Model
Lightweight Software Engineering Project team with Open Source community participation and advocacy
REASON Had to deliver on a timeliness and
deliverables 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
What is Free and Open Source?
Free as in Speech Freedom to access, run, modify and redistribute
Open Source Is a set of principles and practices that promotes access
to the design and production of goods and knowledge Open APIs, Open Code (Blueprints), Open Standards
Regulated by FOSS Licenses GPL (FSF), LPGL (FSF), Apache (ASF), BSD, CPL Based on Copyright law, but spun on it's head (copyleft) Rights are passed perpectually to users GPL have been proven in court e.g. FSF vs BT
Software is special Open Source software becomes a global public good
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 with 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
Other Modules Get Added
Disaster Victim (IDP) Module Volunteer Management Module Inventory Management Evacuation Management Data Import / Export Reporting Module
Mobile Research POCs
USB Disk / Laptop
PDA
OLPC
+ Synchronization
Phase II later stages and early 2007
Team composition LSF Core team providing development and
regular releases Global community providing design input and
helping to spread awareness
Leadership Sahana Committee
50% developers and 50% domain experts “Meritocracy on contribution”
It continues.. forged in the fire
SahanaCommunity Sahana
Software
Builds & Refines
Incident or Dire Need
Urgent Requirements
Attracts & Grows
Incidents Sahana has responded to
Gov-NADRA, for Asian Quake in Pakistan – 2005 Officially deployed and integrated to NADRA (Pakistan
Government) to track all victims Gov, 3 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 familiesSahana Downloaded overs 25,000 times
Lessons Learned on Deployment
System should be endorsed and/or authorized by Government (and UN)
IT Literacy and User familiarity System should be easy to install If possible pre-deploy and train!
A Sahana local response team is ideal Local cultural and operational knowledge
Build resilient systems (=> simple, flexible) Standards are very important for
acceptance
It continues.. forged in the fire
SahanaCommunity Software +
Best Practices
Builds & Refines
Incident or Dire Need
Urgent Requirements
Attracts & Grows
Endorsements and Awards
New Free Software Foundation (FSF) award for “Social Benefit” won and inspired by Sahana
Sourceforge Project of the Month, June 2006 Software 2006, CA USA Good Samaritan Award One of the top 10 Open Source Project to keep
an eye on – Network World article Recognized by forums such as:
− US WSIS, ISCRAM, UNDP IOSN, StrongAngel, AsiaOSS Symposium, Emergency Communications Asia
The Community Spreads (2007)
An Open Global Community (300+)
The 4 Communities of Sahana
SAHANA
Free & Open Source
Community
HumanitarianCommunity
(NGOs)
EmergencyManagementCommunity
AcademicResearchCommunity
Different Perspectives of the elephant
SAHANA
“Cool LAMPDevelopment
Platform!”
“By theCommunity
for theCommunity”
“Innovativebut not matureEM System”
“A great Research POCPlatform”
PMC and Board is Formed
2007 LSF institutes the PMC and Board To take Sahana to the next level Sahana Committee => PMC Board is appointed by LSF
Open Source and EM Profiles + Some PMC members
This group was given the mandate to take Sahana to the next level
In Conclusion
Sahana was and continues to be forged in the fire (it keeps it very real)
Sahana Neutral A-Political Solution where ownership is given to the end user
The FOSS benefits align to humanitarian values very well
A diverse community is fundamental to the continued success of the project
Sahana is now more than just Software
Take Part in the R-Evolution
Join us in taking Sahana to the next level
Join the Sahana Community!
http://www.sahana.lk
Sahana has different priorities
Enterprise Application
Deployment
Technology
Architecture
User Interface
SahanaMulti-Node, Many
Dependant Fixed Nodes and high concurrency
Replicable Mobile Single-Node with low spec
hardware require + USBCompiled for efficiency
and legacy mature programming language
Low learning curve, easily modifiable scripting
language
Self contained complex Architecture with high cyclometic complexity
Simple “Intuitive” Architecture with OS
dependencies and low cyclomatic complexity
Highly interactive, responsive RIA application
Low network throughput XHTML UI accessible on
PDAs
APPENDIX