Author: Nuwan Waidyanatha
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Enticing Nepali Engineering Students with Sahana
Biplov Bhandari (Researcher and Sahana Developer @ AIT) and I (Nuwan) had the opportunity to present our Sahana work in Nepal. This was at the recently held 6th Mahotsav IT Festival hosted by the Gandaki College of Engineering and Science (GCES), in Pokhara, Nepal. The Honorable Minister of Information and Communications: Mr. Sherdan Rai inaugurated the…
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CAP Implementation Workshop 2015: Rendering Agents Setting the Course
This year had many Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) message aggregation organizations present their stories in complementing the delivery of early warnings. Everyone is mostly interested in doing public warning. Sahana Alerting and Messaging Broker (SAMBRO) was the only solution that addressed Restricted and Private alerting in support of multi-agency situational-awareness. Google.org, Meteoalarm, the Weather Company,…
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Training of Trainer Workshop Final Day with ESCAP
The final day of the Training of Master Trainers Workshop was primarily interactions with the CAP on a Map project UNESCAP Program Officer: Mr. Alf Blikberg. The participants had the opportunity to present their cases to him. The outline of their presentation discussed the current early warning practices in their country, their satisfaction/dissatisfaction on the…
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One week after, SAMBRO Users asking for more of Sahana
“You guys have put in a lot of thought in to the SAMBRO design“, a participant said. The first week of the Training of Trainer program had the participants learn about GIS and Sahana. They went further into learning about the tools and techniques associated with GIS, specifically intended for risk mapping. Thereafter, the participants…
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Training of SAMBRO Trainers
Sahana Alerting and Messaging Broker (SAMBRO) continues to mature; especially with the Maldives, Myanmar, and Philippine implementations. Trainees from the three countries belonging to their Meteorological and Disaster Management Agencies are receiving training. They will receive training on GIS concepts, techniques, and tools required for developing predefined alert areas and training on administering, configuring, and…
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Few weeks after the workshop Myanmar faces massive floods
Two weeks after the ‘CAP on a Map‘ project kick-off workshop, the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology got busy responding to the massive floods – “Heavy seasonal rains caused flooding in Rakhine State and other parts of the country at the end of June. At the beginning of July, the Relief and Resettlement Department (RRD)…
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Philippines is ready, set, go with CAP on a Map
The Philippines Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), Philippines Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS), and the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) are three agencies of foremost importance. Combined they are responsible for the monitoring, detecting, and warning of key natural hazards that continue to threaten and impact the Archipelago. On…
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CAP on a Map project kickoff in the Maldives
A workshop and set of meetings (April 15 & 16, 2015) took place in the capitol city Male in the Maldives. It was an event of the CAP on a Map kickoff in the Maldives. The project aims to improve the institutional responsiveness to all-hazards. The workshop and meeting, serving as a platform to initiate…
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Symbols in Alerts feed into Federation of Internet Alerting Standards
Almost one year ago, I had presented a concept on the use of “pictographs in alerting” and shared the evidence for the growing need for such an initiative. This was at the 2013 CAP Implementation Workshop in Geneva. The real need was to aid the linguistically challenged: tourist in a foreign country and illiterate. Moreover, it…