The Sahana Software Foundation assisted community-based organizations with support and services around the management of mutual aid and assistance to populations affected by Hurricane Sandy in the northeastern United States – particularly in New York City and New Jersey. We  stood up a server (cloud hosted on Amazon EC2) that provided Sahana Eden capabilities customized and configured to the specific needs of disaster response operations for Hurricane Sandy.

This system was initially designed to support the collection and aggregation of requests for material assistance and volunteers from the neighborhoods hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy: the Rockaways in Queens, Coney Island and Red Hook in Brooklyn, Staten Island and communities along the New Jersey coast. This allowed organizations, relief drop-off locations and individuals volunteering or donating needed relief items to more effectively prioritize and dispatch needed resources to where they were needed most. The system also provided a means of quickly conducting daily inventories to provide visibility and transparency, and allowed for more efficient and effective distribution of aid – connecting those in need with those who have.

The Sahana Software Foundation also assisted the City of New York in its use of Sahana software to manage its response to Hurricane Sandy.  The City’s Office of Emergency Management has been relying on Sahana software for its shelter management and registration programs since 2007.