The Sahana Software Foundation is excited to be working in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and RAND Corporation to develop a Community Resilience Mapping Tool using the Sahana Eden Open Source Disaster Management Software. This is an initiative within the Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience (LACCDR) project whose aim is to engage community-based organizations in providing leadership and partnership to promote community resilience in the face of public health emergencies such as pandemics and disasters. The tool will help communities to collect their own data on vulnerability, hazards and resources within their communities. By looking at the relationships between this data and data from external sources such as the Census and US Geological Survey, communities will be able to understand who and what will be affected by disasters and what people need, to help them make decisions to enhance their own resilience.
Sahana Eden is being extended for this tool to intuitively collect and display data on vulnerable people, community incidents, risks, resources, organizations, trained people, locations and evacuation routes. There will be an emphasis on using maps and charts to visualize this data in ways which are meaningful to communities. We’re just finishing the design phase of the project now and our development team will be implementing the project over the next few months. Here’s some of the original wireframes:
To get in touch with the Sahana Software Foundation about the Community Resilience Mapping Tool contact Michael Howden (michael@sahanafoundation.org)
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This tool is very helpful and needed. Unity in Disasters would be a good portal for a tool like this because of the region we cover. It would provide a standardized tool that would overlap in neighboring states. With each state creating it individual crisis mapping, outside help (which is where most help comes from) would have a recognizable format to assess. Response and Recovery for the 7 Scenarios of Support may even work more efficiently.
The “Seven Scenarios of Support” in disaster relief are described by the time frames as follows:
1) 72 hours
2) 7 days
3) 14 days
4) 30 days
5) 90 days
6) 6 months
7) 12 months
Unity in Disasters, Inc participates in response in order to determine a more accurate picture of unmet relief needs that cover the first three scenarios. In addition, we participate in recovery through case management, which covers scenarios four, five, and six.
We created this concept to provide the communities with a better understanding of the stages and timeframes to help assist in their recovery from disasters.
This is a follow up to our previous article titled, “Donations: Who, What, When, and Why”.
4/12/13
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Dear SAHANA team
I am expert in disaster risk management and resilience. I have been thinking of a similar web based tool and heard about you from a friend in Sri Lanka, Jayantha Fernando, a Eisenhower fellow.
This is an interesting tool and I am keen to work with SAHANA team closely to make a contextualized tool for Bangladesh. I am not aware about any resource at this moment but exploring opportunities to make a pilot and convince a donor.
Looking forward to hear from you.
Shashanka Saadi
DRM and Resilience expert, Bangladesh
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Please stay in touch. We’d be interested in hearing more about your project. We are going to be having a virtual Sahana Eden training later this month. It might be something you would want to have people participate in if you are planning to implement a project with Sahana Eden.
The best way to connect to our community of Sahana developers is through our mailing lists. More information can be found on our Community Page.
Best regards,
Mark