Sahana Response to Pakistan Floods

The Sahana Software Foundation has responded to the recent floods in Pakistan through providing a public portal of its Sahana Eden software. Located at http://pakistan.sahanafoundation.org, the site was designed to track situation reports collected from aid agencies working in Pakistan and is initially focused on the many flood assessment reports being reported by such agencies as the UN World Food Programme.

Sahana is working with Crisis Commons and Open Street Maps on providing support for data collection and mapping data.

If you are interested in supporting these efforts, please visit the #sahana-eden chat room on irc.freenode.net.

Taiwan Sahana Development Forum and SahanaCamp July 30-August 3, 2010

Taiwan Sahana Development Forum: The Science and Technology Advisory Group of the Executive Yuan / Ministry of Interior is sponsoring the Taiwan Sahana Development Forum on July 30, 2010 at the Howard International House in Taipei. Organized by the Institute for Information Industry (III) and supported by the Research Center for Information Technology Innovation at Academia Sinica, The Red Cross Society of the ROC and the Frontier Foundation, this one-day event is designed to introduce Sahana to multiple governmental agencies and jurisdictions in Taiwan, along with many charitable non-profit organizations involved in disaster relief. This forum is the result of a lot of hard work on the part of the Sahana Taiwan team, who has been working on fixing bugs, customizing Sahana to Taiwan's needs, and completing a translation of Sahana Agasti over much of the past year.

Directors Chamindra de Silva, Darmendra Pradeeper and Gavin Treadgold are joining CEO Mark Prutsalis to represent the Sahana Software Foundation to speak to the expected audience of approximately 200 persons representing government, academia, industry and the non-profit sector. Read more at the Sahana Taiwan website

SahanaCamp 1.1: After attending SahanaCamp in Delhi, Hsiaojan Lui, the Project Manager for Sahana Taiwan wanted to repeat the event in Taiwan. Thanks to the support from Dr. Hsiao and sponsorship from the Research Center for Information Technology Innovation, Acadamia Sinica, Sahana Eden community members Michael Howden and Fran Boon will also be attending the Sahana Taiwan Development Forum and then facilitating SahanaCamp 1.1 from 31 July – 3 August.

Case Study of Sahana Software Foundation Response to Haiti Earthquake Published by UN APCITC

A case study of the Sahana Software Foundation's response to the Haiti earthquake co-authored by Sahana Software Foundation CEO Mark Prutsalis and CTO Chamindra de Silva has been published by the UN Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communications Technology for Development (APCICT) as part of their ICTD Case Study Series: ICT for Disaster Risk Reduction.

The May 2010 "Case Study examines the development of Sahana that grew out of the devastation of the Tsunami in Sri Lanka, and has evolved to serve and support a variety of ICT related needs of the disaster response and relief operations in Haiti. Sahana and its community of dedicated contributors illustrate the potential and lifesaving power of effective and coordinated ICT use in disaster relief and management operations.” (from the introduction)

The case study concludes that “The Sahana Disaster Management System continues to evolve in order to address coordination needs and to adapt and assimilate new technologies. Haiti was a prime example of multiple Sahana instances being customized and deployed for different purposes. This is a testament to the strength of the H-FOSS model for delivering ICT applications in the field of humanitarian relief.... Sahana is evolving beyond a simple ICT system to include some of the best practices in the application of ICT for disaster management.”

The full text of the foreword, preface and chapter on Sahana may be read here: Sahana Haiti Response Case Study

To read the full report, please visit the UNAPCICT website.

Announcing SahanaCamp 2010 in New Delhi, India

SahanaCamp 2010 will be held from 2-5 July 2010 and will include a one-day Sahana Workshop "Information Technology Solutions for Disasters and Development" on 3 July 2010. See below for more details. (and click title link above for full article).

Cost: FREE

Applications: Spaces are limited. Applications close 14 June.
Register for Sahana Workshop (3 July only)
Register for SahanaCamp (includes Sahana Workshop)

Details
Sahana Workshop is a one-day event which will provide an introduction to how information technology can be used to assist organisations working in disasters and development and is designed for people working for NGOs/UN/Government/Other Agencies. It will include opportunities to share experiences and lessons learned with others who have worked in this area. You'll get hand on experience using the Sahana Eden platform which was deployed in response to the Earthquake in Haiti and includes SMS and Mapping technologies. Finally, you'll have the opportunity to share your real world needs for information technology solutions to provide input for the future development of Sahana.

SahanaCamp is a four-day long intensive event, for programmers and web designers who are involved or interested in helping organizations working in Disasters and Development. You will be introduced to programming in Python on the Sahana Eden Rapid Application Development (RAD) platform. You will be developing real solutions to meet real needs such as Logistics, Organisational Management and Mapping or according to your needs. You'll be working aside members of the core Sahana Eden development team, who will be there to support and encourage you along. SahanaCamp would be ideal for programmers and web designers who are developing solution for Disasters and Development organizations. Participants are expected to have existing programming or design skills (and will certainly learn some new ones during the camp!).

Sahana a Gartner 2010 Cool Vendor

Gartner Inc. has named the Sahana Software Foundation a Cool Vendor in Risk Management and Compliance for 2010 for its Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) approach to disaster management.

Gartner's report, published in April 2010, is focused on the increasing and diverse risk management and compliance challenges facing organizations, which they see as requiring specialized options to supplement enterprise risk management and compliance applications. They note: "In this Cool Vendors report, we highlight three vendors that offer solutions that are certainly relevant to risk management and compliance, but might not immediately spring to mind when you think of GRC [Governance, Risk Management, Compliance] solutions. The variations in the GRC problems that these vendors are helping to solve demonstrate how important it is to understand the context of the problem."

Calling Sahana "a unique offering for managing responses to humanitarian crises”, Gartner “chose Sahana as a 2010 Cool Vendor because the Sahana software is the only FOSS application in the broader disaster management market that is developed and maintained by an all-volunteer force since its inception. This is crucial, because each new disaster deployment brings with it new requirements and the need for new sources of programming support."

The note recommends Sahana software for Government emergency and disaster relief managers, humanitarian aid organizations, business continuity management professionals and academic institutions.

Copies of the Research Note are available from Gartner.