Regional Situation Awareness Module that I presented for the regional disaster management workshop sponsored by the British High Commission

1. Disaster Situation Awareness with Information Technology Chamindra de Silva SAHANA, Director and PMC Member W3C EIIF XG Co-Chair Virtusa, Technology Strategist

4. Deployed for governments of Pakistan, Philippines, Peru, Bangladesh, China, US (New York, Galveston) and again in SL

6. Useful applications of IT for disaster management

7. Important considerations in applying IT

8. Demo Sahana

10. Making the best educated guess is inevitable!

12. Levels of Situation Awareness Current State of Situation Level 1 Perception of Elements In Current Situation Level 2 Comprehension of Current Situation Level 3 Projection of Future States Quality of Information Decision Information Action

13. SA in Emergency Management Well defined Response Process Well defined Information Flows Well Trained Responders e.g. Traffic Accident Building Fire Bus Bomb Blast Information Information Situation Awareness Act Decide

15. To match relief capacity boundary of response effort extends to other groups (Other Gov, Civil Society, Foreign Aid, UN)

16. Core Decision Makers need to consult a wider group for better situation awareness

17. Information has to be gathered from non-traditional “uninitiated” sources for better Situation Awareness

18. Disasters Coordination Large Scale (like Tsunami) 10s of Orgs 100s of Orgs 1000s – 1 Mill Government Relief Government Ministries, 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 - sometimes competing Victims Effective Collaboration and Coordination! Relief

19. SA in Disaster Management Multiple Disparate Information Sources Information Overload Large delta to reality Diverse Responders Relief workers, Volunteers Multiple Parallel independent Processes Trust? Clarity Repetition Priority? Information Information Situation Awareness?? Act Information Information Information Decide

20. Levels of Situation Awareness Current State of Situation Level 1 Perception of Elements In Current Situation Level 2 Comprehension of Current Situation Level 3 Projection of Future States Quality of Information Decision Information Action

22. Evacuation

23. Setting up Shelters

24. Effective Distribution of Aid

26. Protecting Children

27. Trauma Counseling

28. Assuring Security of Affected Areas

29. Rehabilitation Live saving decisions need to be made very fast ! The best decisions are the most informed ones

31. Inconsistent Terminology

33. Delayed Situation Awareness ! 16 120 8 5 10 28

36. Coordinating Who is doing What Where?

37. Tracking Displaced Families

38. Collaborative and live Incident Mapping

39. Aid Logistics Management

40. Scalable Alerting

41. Data Collation , Calculation and Reporting

42. Automated Messaging to the Public “ Every Second Counts” => IT Maximizes Efficiency & Effectiveness

44. Coverage of Services

45. Self-Allocation and Reporting

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

48. Computer based search heuristics

49. Tracking Displaced Family units

50. Analyzing networks of connections The Missing People Registry helps track and find missing, people

52. Matching Aid to Ground Needs

53. Inventories/Catalog

54. Quantities

55. Expiration dates

56. Re-order levels

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

59. Shelters (IDPs)

60. (field) Hospitals

61. Organizations

62. Responders

63. Stores

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

65. Mobility of Information (Field Access) USB Disk / Laptop PDA OLPC + Synchronization The Messaging Module sends and recieves SMS / emails from responders

68. Designing for disaster management

69. “Tactical” Hazard Info. Center (HIC)

70. Collaborative Virtual Helpdesk zone of trust (legislation)

72. Data Validity or Accountability for data

76. Peer 2 Peer Pony Express

78. Situation Specific

79. Organization Specific

81. Ownership of data

84. Sub-applications designed to address th e common Disaster Management probs

86. Facilitate the effective information exchange between a diverse groups of people (NGOs, Government, EM groups and victims)

87. Primary focus is to help victims

90. NADRA, Govt. of Pakistan for Asian Quake in Pakistan – 2005

91. Govt. of Philippines, for Landslide disaster in Philippines– 2005

92. Pre-deployment in Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka

93. Yogjakarta Earthquake, Indonesia – 2006

94. Sahana: Sri Lanka - CNO

95. Sahana: NADRA, Pakistan

97. Deployment for office of the President, Peru, 2007

98. Deployment for Disaster Management Bureau, for Cyclone Sidr, Bangladesh, 2007

99. Used for Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka, 2008

100. Deployed and used in Myanmar, 2008

101. Deployed and used for Chengdu, China, 2008

102. Deployed and used for Bihar, India 2008

103. Sahana: NYC Coastal, US

104. Sahana: Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka

106. Neutral A-Political Solution

107. Ownership and Empowerment of end-user (Government)

108. R.A.D Disaster Customization

109. Multi-Organizational (local) Support

110. Transparent and Open Community Development Process

111. Portable and Multiple Deployment Modes

114. Based on Copyright law, but spun on it's head (copyleft)

115. Rights are passed perpectually to users

121. LSF, IBM, Bluepoint, Respere, Google GSoC, ISCRAM, Universities: Uo Colombo (SL), Uo Moratuwa (SL), Trinity College (US), Uo Maryland (US), Tilburg University (Netherlands), NYC

122. Quote from Philippines Response "the NDCC and OCD value SAHANA's contribution to the relief and rehabilitation phases of the Southern Leyte landslides and recognize the tremendous boost to our preparedness for future disasters” “ while SAHANA cannot solve all the problems in a disaster, it is an excellent tool to create registries that can provide timely and reliable information on missing persons, donated goods and services, camp locations, and the like. It's technology that can help many people in a disaster. In fact, there is no greater innovation that matters more than that which saves lives. " Avelino J. Cruz, Jr. Secretary of National Defense, Philippines

123. Thank You Further Questions? [email_address] Sahana Demo http://demo.sahana.lk Sahana Website http://www.sahana.lk