Overview & History of Sahana AAAI Spring Symposium 2015 March 23-25, 2015 Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA Chamindra de Silva Director, Sahana Foundation | Director, Virtusa Corporation Ramindu Deshapriya Member, Sahana Foundation | Mphil Student University of Kelaniya
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Overview &History of Sahana
AAAI Spring Symposium 2015March 23-25, 2015
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
Chamindra de SilvaDirector, Sahana Foundation | Director, Virtusa Corporation
Ramindu DeshapriyaMember, Sahana Foundation | Mphil Student University of Kelaniya
Sahana Intro (20 mins) – Chamindra de Silva
• An Overview of Sahana
• A History and Evolution of Sahana (SI -> SIII AKA Eden)
• Deployment Examples and Case Studies
Sahana-Eden Demo (30 mins) – Ramindu Deshapriya
• How to setup Sahana
• Sahana Eden Features
• Building a new module
• How to create a new (structured) data model
• Sahana’s support for Linked Data
• Import and Export options
• Other customization Options & API
Agenda
The Sahana Project:
What is it in a nutshell? Free and Open Source
Global Community Built
Disaster Management
RAD Platform
Foundation 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
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
“Sahana” – Relief in Sinhalese Rapidly custom build for SL Gov to handle Tsunami
“Sahana”
Software
Rapidly Builds
Tsunami 2004
CNO Urgent
RequirementsSri Lankan
IT Community
Sri Lankan IT Community =
LSF/LKLUG + SL IT Industry + Academia
Sahana
Phase I
Sahana first deployed for
Sri Lanka tsunami response for SLGov
Sahana
Phase I
Independent Hazard Info. Center
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
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
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
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
Lessons: Large Scale Disaster Management Systems were rare!
Surprisingly no one had built such a system before! (we had asked FEMA, IBM)
Identified many of the common coordination problems of a large scale disaster disaster and formulated modules to address them
BUT
NEVER build a disaster management system from scratch during a disaster again!!
Learned how I.T. Fail in a disaster
Comms can be saturated or not accessible
Systems have to be able to work disconnected
User familiarity can be low
Systems has to be as intuitive as possible
Data centers can get impacted
Systems have to be resilient (simple), mobile and self-sufficient
Functionality can be inadequate
System has to be quickly customizable
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
Sahana
Phase II
Slightly different design goals than what we were used to at the time