The document summarizes the evolution of the Sahana system and community. It describes how Sahana started in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and how it has expanded to support other disasters globally through an open source community-driven model. Key points include how Sahana has addressed coordination challenges during disasters, its modular design approach, and examples of deployments in countries like Pakistan, Philippines, Indonesia, and China.

1. Evolution of the Sahana
System, Community and Standards
Sahana Conference
30th July 2010, Taipei
Chamindra de Silva
SAHANA, Director and CTO
VIRTUSA, Head of Strategic Initiatives

2. “In the long history of
humankind (and animal
kind, too) those who
learned to collaborate and
improvise most effectively
have prevailed”
- Charles Darwin

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

4. 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

5. Some Disaster by Type and Impact

6. 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”

7. The Response Community
Disasters Coordination
10s of Orgs 100s of Orgs 1000s – 1 Mill
Government Relief UN, NGOs Local Relief
Local Authorities, Police, Red Cross, OCHA, CARE, Spontaneous volunteers,
Army, Fire fighters, WHO, Sarvodaya, etc corporate village
+ Authorized coord + focused on people communities, friends and
+ Well trained + trusted to accept aid family
+ Accountable +/- less well trained + first responders
+/- Big picture relief + accountable + lot of capacity
(e.g. national security) - Donor driven + instant aid
- Procedures create - narrow focus / fragmented - not trained
bottlenecks - sometimes competing - focus unknown
- Overloaded - not accountable
Effective Collaboration and Coordination!
Relief
Victims

8. 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

9. Typical Problems Responders have
work on..
 Search And Rescue  Tracing Missing
People
 Evacuation
 Trauma Counseling
 Setting up Shelters
 Assuring Security of
 Effective Distribution
Affected Areas
of Aid
 Protecting Children
 Management of
Donars and Donations  Rehabilitation
Live saving decisions need to be made very fast!
The best decisions are the most informed ones

10. 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

11. SA in Emergency Management
Well Trained
Well defined Responders
Information
Flows
Information
Situation
Act
Awareness
Information
Decide
Well defined
Response
Process

12. 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

13. SA in Disaster Management
Multiple Disparate
Information Sources
Diverse Responders
Information Relief workers,
Info Overload Volunteers
r ma Large delta
tion
to reality
Information Situation
Act
Awareness??
Information
tio n
rma
Info
Decide
n
a tio
orm
Inf Multiple Parallel independent Processes

14. If you were to do it manually
2

Channels N(N-1)/2 = O(N ) 5
 Information Lost in relay
and propagation 10
 Redundant Data Collection 8
 Inconsistent Terminology
 Manual Collation / 28
Calculation 16
 Delayed Situation
Awareness
120

15. 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 )

16. 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

17. 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

18. How Sahana Started
Tsunami 2004
Builds
Urgent
Sri Lanka
Urgent
Requirements
Requirements IT
Sahana
Community
Software
IT Community =
LSF + LKLUG + IT Industry + Academia

19. 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

20. They Build it for the CNO

21. Independent Hazard Info. Center

22. 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!!

23. 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

24. Collaborative Virtual Helpdesk
zone of trust
(legislation)

25. Peer 2 Peer Pony Express

26. Sahana Phase II
A Global Need (2005)
Builds
Requirements
Requirements LSF
++SIDA Funds
SIDA Funds
Team Sahana
Phase II
FOSS
Software
LSF Team =
“Techies” and FOSS Enthusiasts

27. “Plugin” / Platform Pattern
Core Module Core Module New Module New Module
Framework and Platform Services
 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

28. 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

29. 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

30. 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

31. 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

32. 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

33. 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

34. The community + FOSS cycle
2006
Builds & Refines
LSF +
Global Community Sahana
Software
Attracts & Grows

35. 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

36. 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

37. Other Modules Get Added
 Disaster Victim (IDP) Module
 Volunteer Management Module
 Inventory Management
 Evacuation Management
 Data Import / Export
 Reporting Module

38. Mobile Research POCs
+ Synchronization
USB Disk / Laptop OLPC
PDA

39. 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”

40. It continues.. forged in the fire
Incident or Dire Need
Builds & Refines
Urgent
Sahana
Urgent
Requirements
Requirements Community Sahana
Software
Attracts & Grows

41. 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 families
Sahana Downloaded overs 25,000 times

42. 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

43. It continues.. forged in the fire
Incident or Dire Need
Builds & Refines
Urgent
Sahana
Urgent
Requirements
Requirements Community Software +
Best Practices
Attracts & Grows

44. Deployment Model: China Example
 Multiple local groups reach out to Sahana
 Call out made in Sahana community
 One initiative progresses further
 L10N / Promotion, QA, Deployment
 IBM-China for Chendu Gov and then Police
 24x7 Technical Support
 LSF, Trinity College, Community Individuals
 Funds and Sponsorship
 IBM-Foundation
 40+ Families reunited within first few days

45. 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

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

47. The 4 Communities of Sahana
Free & Open Emergency
Source Management
Community Community
SAHANA
Humanitarian Academic
Community Research
(NGOs) Community

48. Different Perspectives of the elephant
“Cool LAMP “Innovative
Development but not mature
Platform!” EM System”
SAHANA
“By the “A great
Community Research
for the POC
Community” Platform”

49. 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

50. Sahana Now
 Multiple Projects
 Sahana Phase 2 → Sahana Agasti (PHP)
 Sahana Eden (Python)
 Sahana Mobile (J2ME, Android)
 Sahana Standards (W3C, OASIS)
 Mission stays the same
 One Diverse Community Community

51. System to System Integration
 Typically there are multiple systems
 How do we get them to work with each other?
 Standard
 The common language systems use to talk
 Examples
 CAP, EDXL, TWML, TSO, PFIF
 Importance
 For better integration and automation
 To better future proof your IT infrastructure
 To permit an upgrade plan for data

52. Deciding on the right Standards
 Factors W3C EIIF XG
 Who controls it? for help
 Is it an Open Standard? How Open?
 How well is it adopted in popular systems?
 Is it targetted to our demographic?
 Has it being used in the field?
 Level of Openess of an “Open Standard”
 Royalty Free
 Open Process for developing and maintaining
standard
 Available Open Source implementation

53. Reactive to Proactive improvements
Preparedness Projects
Builds & Refines
F
I
National L Sahana
National
Requirements
Requirements T
E
Community Software +
R
Best Practices
Attracts & Grows

54. 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

55. Take Part in the R-Evolution
Join us in taking Sahana to the next level
Join the Sahana Community!
http://www.sahana.lk

56. APPENDIX

57. Assessing Software Maturity
 Models: OSMM, OpenBRR, QSOS
 Rating that measures and quantifies:
 Functionality
 Usability, Quality
 Scalability
 Reliability
 Fault Tolerance (BCP)
 Security
 Performance
 Adoption
 Vendor Lock In
 Support

58. If Sharing has Constraints
 Data Sensitivity Levels
Da
ta
Se
ns
i ti v
i ty
 Authentication, Authorization, Access

59. The Tug: Data Access vs Protection
Access Protection
 Shared Data  Trusted Orgs only
 Legal backing
 Integrated  Secured WAN
 Empowering  Access Control
Responders / Orgs Lists
 Data Classification
levels
 Social Networking  Encrypted data

60. Sahana has different priorities
Enterprise Application Sahana
Multi-Node, Many Replicable Mobile Single-
Dependant Fixed Nodes Node with low spec
Deployment and high concurrency hardware require + USB
Compiled for efficiency Low learning curve, easily
and legacy mature modifiable scripting
Technology programming language language
Simple “Intuitive”
Self contained complex Architecture with OS
Architecture with high dependencies and low
Architecture cyclometic complexity cyclomatic complexity
Low network throughput
Highly interactive, XHTML UI accessible on
User Interface responsive RIA application PDAs