SahanaCamp IOTX

SahanaCamp IOTX

Overview + History of Sahana

“No innovation matters more than that which saves lives”

Avelino J. Cruz, Jr., Secretary of National Defense of the Philippines

on the use of Sahana following disastrous mudslides in 2005

Agenda •  An Overview of Sahana •  What makes Sahana Unique? •  A history and evolution of Sahana •  The Sahana Foundation •  Case Studies…

The Sahana Project: n  What is it in a nutshell?

n  Open Source n  Global Community Built n  Disaster Management n  Platform

n  Mission To save lives by providing information management solutions that enable organizations and communities to better prepare for and respond to disasters

The Historic Trigger: 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake & Tsunami ☀ At least 226,000 dead ☀ Up to 5 million people

lost their 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

“Facts and Figures: Asian Tsunami Disaster” New Scientist, 20 January 2005

Typical Problems Responders had work on..

n  Search And Rescue n  Setting up Shelters n  Effective Distribution

of Aid n  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

Disaster => Information Overload!

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

Victims

Effective Collaboration and Coordination!

Relief

Disasters Coordination Rapid Info Sharing and Collaboration Needed

10s of Orgs 100s of Orgs 1000s – 1 Mill

How Can I.T. Help? Large Scale Info Management and Dissemination is an area IT excels in

n  Scalable management of information n  No stacks of forms and files to manage

n  Efficient distribution of information n  Accessibility of information on demand

n  Automatic collation and calculation n  No delay for assessments and calculations

n  Live Situation Awareness n  Reports are updated live as data goes in

IT Improves Manageability ( Impact α H x V / M )

“Sahana” – Relief in Sinhalese Rapidly custom build for SL Gov to handle Tsunami

“Sahana” Software

Rapidly Builds

Tsunami 2004

CNO Urgent Requirements

Sri Lankan IT Community

Sri Lankan IT Community = LSF/LKLUG + SL IT Industry + Academia

Sahana first deployed for Sri Lanka tsunami response

Tracking Missing People / Casualties n  Shared Bulletin

Board of lost / found n  Computer based

search heuristics n  Tracking Family

units n  Analyzing networks

of connections

The Missing People Registry helps track and find missing, people

Who is doing What, Where & When?

n  Registry of operating relief organizations

n  Coverage of Services

n  Self-Allocation and Reporting

n  Contact Information

The Organization Registry helps maintain data (contact, services, region, etc) of organizations groups and volunteers working in the disaster

Matching Aid to Ground Realities

n  Estimating Needs n  Matching Aid to

Ground Needs n  Inventories/Catalog n  Quantities n  Expiration dates n  Re-order levels n  Tracking Allocation

The Request Management System tracks all requests and helps match pledges for support, aid and supplies to fullfilment

Lessons: Large Scale Disaster Management Systems were rare!

n  Surprisingly no one had built such a system before! (we had asked FEMA, IBM)

n  Identified many of the common coordination problems of a large scale disaster disaster and formulated modules to address them

BUT n  NEVER build a disaster management system

from scratch during a disaster again!!

Sahana Generic Platform Rebuild A generic disaster management platform

LSF Team

(+ SIDA)

Sahana Software

A Global Need (2005)

Tsunami Requirements

LSF Team = FOSS Geeks on Fellowships

Builds and Donates

Collaborative Situation Mapping

Collaborative Map of n  Hazards / Incidents n  Shelters (IDPs) n  (field) Hospitals n  Organizations n  Responders n  Stores n  etc

The Shelter Registry helps track data on all shelters setup following the Disaster

Why Map Data?

Much faster situation awareness

Takes 5 seconds

Geographical Information System (GIS)

We donated to the world as Open Source Software What is (Free and) Open Source? n  Free as in Speech

n  Freedom to access, run, modify and redistribute n  Open Source

n  Is a set of principles and practices that promotes access to the design and production of goods and knowledge

n  Regulated by Copyright Law n  Based on Copyright law, but spun on it's head (copyleft) n  Rights are passed perpectually to users n  GPL (FSF), LPGL (FSF), Apache (ASF), BSD, CPL

n  Software becomes a Global Public Good n  Open Source software becomes a global public good

Why does Open Source make this better? This was a natural alignment to Humanitrian Values n  Freely Available to deploy

n  No discrimination on access (Red Cross CC #2) n  Ability to “leave technology behind” (RC CC #6)

n  Rapid customization to actual needs with code n  L10N and integration (RC CC #5) n  Building local capacities & self-reliance (RC CC #6)

n  Open system => Transparent and trustworthy n  Better acceptance than “foreign” proprietary systems

n  Countries/NGOs can collaborate to develop n  Get the best minds from the world to participate in

building the software n  This should be a global public good

n  Build on each others work by including it in project

Called Humanitarian-FOSS or H-FOSS

Lessons: Open Source in this domain had tremendous acceptance n  The open source community coupled with the

humanitarian community sprit provided a strong contributor motivation

n  “Software Engineers without Boarders” n  Acceptance of an Open Source Disaster

Management system and HFOSS was tremendous (UNDP IOSN, ISCRAM, AsiaOSS, Govs)

n  We hardly spent anything marketing the product as it spread by word of mouth and by every use

LSF + IBM + Community

●  2004 - Indian Ocean Earthquake & Tsunami

●  2005 - Pakistan - Kashmir Earthquake

●  2005 - Philippine - Landslides

●  2006 - Indonesia - Yogjakarta Earthquake,

●  2007 - Peru - Ica Earthquake

●  2007 - Bangladesh - Cyclone Sidr

●  2008 - China - Chengdu-Sitzuan Earthquake

●  2008 - Myanmar - Cyclone Nargis

●  2008 - India - Bihar Flooding

Sahana Open Source Phase Global Open Source Incubation Phase

LSF Team + Global Community

Sahana Software

Builds + Refines

Attracts + Grows

Disaster Incident

Urgent Requirements

The 4 Sub-Communities of Sahana

H-FOSS

Free & Open Source

Community

Humanitarian Community

(NGOs)

Emergency Management (Gov, UN)

Academic Research Community

Different Perspectives of the elephant Sahana became a melting pot of innovation

SAHANA

“Cool Open Source Development

Platform!”

“Grass Roots: By the Community

for the Community”

“Rapidly Customizable EM System”

“A great Crisis Research Platform”

A Community Support Example

n  Multiple local groups reach out to Sahana n  Call out made in Sahana community

n  One initiative progresses further n  L10N / Promotion, QA, Deployment

n  IBM-China for Chendu Gov and then Police (China) n  24x7 Technical Support

n  LSF (SL), Trinity College (US), Community Individuals n  Funds and Sponsorship

n  IBM-Foundation (US,China)

n  40+ Families reunited within first few days

A Community Response Example

LSF + IBM + Community

●  2004 - Indian Ocean Earthquake & Tsunami

●  2005 - Pakistan - Kashmir Earthquake

●  2005 - Philippine - Landslides

●  2006 - Indonesia - Yogjakarta Earthquake,

●  2007 - Peru - Ica Earthquake

●  2007 - Bangladesh - Cyclone Sidr

●  2008 - China - Chengdu-Sitzuan Earthquake

●  2008 - Myanmar - Cyclone Nargis

●  2008 - India - Bihar Flooding

Endorsements as a leading Open Source project l  New Free Software Foundation (FSF) award for

“Social Benefit” won and inspired by Sahana l  Sourceforge Project of the Month, June 2006 l  Software 2006, CA USA Good Samaritan Award l  One of the top 10 Open Source Project to keep

an eye on – Network World article l  Recognized by forums such as:

-  US WSIS, ISCRAM, UNDP IOSN, StrongAngel, AsiaOSS Symposium, Emergency Communications Asia

Sahana is not just Software Global Community Incubation Phase

LSF Team + Global Community

Sahana Software

Builds + Refines

Grows

Disaster Incident

Urgent Requirements

GSoC, Global FOSS

The Community Spreads (2007) An Open Global Community (300+)

The community spreads so much that people want to do new projects The Sahana Eden is Founded •  Sahana Eden is founded •  Stronger GIS and Reporting

capabilities •  Extremely Theamable •  Object Oriented Rapid

Application Development Platform

•  A structure is established to govern projects and standards

This Makes Sahana Foundation a host for multiple disaster management/H-FOSS

projects

Sahana Software Foundation gets Established ●  In 2009 a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization what

established to help promote Sahana internationally ●  A Board is created to govern Sahana

●  A common set of standards to run multiple projects

●  Help guide vendor growth

●  Membership is a Meritocracy on Contribution

●  Mission: To save lives by providing information management solutions that enable organizations and communities to better prepare for and respond to disasters

SSF replaced LSF as the custodian Global Community Incubation Phase

SSF + Vendors Global Community

Sahana Software

Builds + Refines

Attracts + Grows

Disaster Incident or Preparedness

Requirements

Preparedness Deployments

●  2007 - USA - Sahana Emergency Management System ●  2009 - USA - NLM: People Locator ●  2011 - Asia Pacific - Red Cross Resource Mapping System ●  2011 - Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Project Portal ●  2012 - Africa - EUROSHA Humanitarian Mapping Platform ●  2012 - Philippines - Relief Goods & Inventory Management ●  2013 - Timor Leste - Disaster Risk Management System ●  2013 - USA - Community Resilience Mapping Tool ●  2013 - Sri Lanka - Disaster Preparedness & Response Division ●  2011 - USA - Give2LA ●  2014 - Caucasus and Central Asia - Humanitarian Data Platform ●  2014 - USA - Maritime Common Operating Platform ●  2014 - Italy - Shelters & Evacuee Management

Disaster Response Deployments ● 2010 - Venezuela - Floods ● 2010 - Mexico - Veracruz Hurricane ● 2010 - Pakistan - Floods ● 2010 - Chile - Earthquake ● 2010 - Haiti - Earthquake ● 2011 - USA - Joplin Tornado ● 2011 - Japan - Tohoku Earthquake & Tsunami ● 2011 - New Zealand - Christchurch Earthquake ● 2011 - Colombia - Floods ● 2012 - USA - Hurricane Sandy ● 2012 - Chile - Wildfires ● 2013 - Philippines - Typhoon Haiyan ● 2014 - Bosnia - Floods

Lessons: Innovation and Adoption n  Encourage innovation and internal competition

n  Eden would not have happened if we stayed with just one product

n  There should always be one mature product n  501(c)3 status and vendors was advantages to

promote deployments n  For preparedness the best model is a public-

private partnership with the Foundation and Vendors on deployment

Community today ●  40 members from 12 countries ●  Programs

o  Google Code In o  Google Summer of Code o  Sahana Internship Program o  Training program o  SahanaCamp

Lead Partners

Testimonials Faced with disaster situations, like those lived by [Chile] in the last days, the need for information becomes imperative. With this Smart Center, we can significantly reduce response times for the persons that search, and optimize volunteer work.

Lorenza Donoso, President of the Chilean Red Cross on the Sahana Eden-based Smart Center solution, used in response to wildfires in early 2012

Sahana [Eden] is blowing my mind. I can’t think of any project we’ve done that we couldn’t build on this platform.

@CDRP_FSU (Center for Disaster Risk Policy at Florida State University), 2012

No innovation matters more than that which saves lives. Avelino J. Cruz, Jr., Secretary of National Defense of the Philippines on the use of

Sahana following disastrous mudslides in 2005

The Sahana Software Foundation’s commitment to supporting grassroots, community-led organizing endeavors has been astounding.

Devin Balkind,, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Sarapis Foundation on the Sahana Software Foundation’s response to Hurricane Sandy, 2013

☀

Recognition

Computerworld Honors Laureate in Human Services 2013

Gartner “Cool Vendor” in Risk Management & Compliance 2010

Public Private Businesses Inc. Best Practices Award 2010

To Recap: Sahana is n  Open Source

n  For alignment to Humanitarian Values n  Global Community Built

n  A melting pot of global innovation with shared investment

n  Disaster Management n  A leading disaster management system

n  Platform n  Rapidly configurable for a disaster response

requirement ●  22 Disaster Response Deployments

●  13 Disaster Preparedness Deployments ●  25+ Countries

Thank You

Chamindra de Silva

Director, Sahana Foundation Director, Virtusa Corporation

chamindra@sahanafoundation.org

SahanaCamp IOTX