Sahana General 2009 Community And System

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Evolution of the Sahana System and Community Sahana Conference March 24 2009, Sri Lanka Chamindra de Silva SAHANA, Director and First PMC Chair VIRTUSA, Technology Strategist H-ICT Community Co-Founder W3C EIIF XG Co-Chair

description

Talk by Chamindra De Silva at the Sahana Conference 2009, Colombo, Sri Lanka. March 24-25, 2009.

Transcript of Sahana General 2009 Community And System

Page 1: Sahana General 2009 Community And System

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

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“In the long history of humankind (and animal

kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively

have prevailed”

- Charles Darwin

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Agenda

Before Evolution... Environment? Sahana System & Community Interaction Mutation of Sahana so far..

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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

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Some Disaster by Type and Impact

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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”

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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

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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

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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

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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

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SA in Emergency Management

Information

Information

SituationAwareness

Act

Decide

Well definedResponse

Process

Well definedInformation

Flows

Well TrainedResponders

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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

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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

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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

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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 )

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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

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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

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How Sahana Started

Sri LankaIT

Community SahanaSoftware

Builds

Tsunami 2004

Urgent Requirements

IT Community = LSF + LKLUG + IT Industry + Academia

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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

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They Build it for the CNO

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Independent Hazard Info. Center

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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!!

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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

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Sahana Phase II

LSF

Team SahanaPhase IIFOSS

Software

Builds

A Global Need (2005)

Requirements+ SIDA Funds

LSF Team = “Techies” and FOSS Enthusiasts

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“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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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The community + FOSS cycle

LSF + Global Community Sahana

Software

Builds & Refines

Attracts & Grows

2006

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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

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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

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Other Modules Get Added

Disaster Victim (IDP) Module Volunteer Management Module Inventory Management Evacuation Management Data Import / Export Reporting Module

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Mobile Research POCs

USB Disk / Laptop

PDA

OLPC

+ Synchronization

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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”

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It continues.. forged in the fire

SahanaCommunity Sahana

Software

Builds & Refines

Incident or Dire Need

Urgent Requirements

Attracts & Grows

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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

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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

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It continues.. forged in the fire

SahanaCommunity Software +

Best Practices

Builds & Refines

Incident or Dire Need

Urgent Requirements

Attracts & Grows

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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

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The Community Spreads (2007)

An Open Global Community (300+)

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The 4 Communities of Sahana

SAHANA

Free & Open Source

Community

HumanitarianCommunity

(NGOs)

EmergencyManagementCommunity

AcademicResearchCommunity

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Different Perspectives of the elephant

SAHANA

“Cool LAMPDevelopment

Platform!”

“By theCommunity

for theCommunity”

“Innovativebut not matureEM System”

“A great Research POCPlatform”

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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

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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

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Take Part in the R-Evolution

Join us in taking Sahana to the next level

Join the Sahana Community!

http://www.sahana.lk

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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

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