As you are probably aware a 7.8 magnitude earthquake has struck Nepal on 25th April causing 2,288 deaths and injuring over 5,500 people [1]. Sahana is already being used in Nepal by both the Nepal Red Cross Society and the National Emergency Operation Center (NEOC) of the Ministry of Home Affairs (for more information see the Sahana Nepal Deployments page). The Sahana Community is currently reaching out to Red Cross, National Emergency Operation Center and other partners in Nepal to see how we can help.

If you are actively involved in the response and recovery efforts and are interested in using the Sahana Open Source Disaster Management Software, please contact our mailing list or email me directly.

Through generous offers of donations from Terri Pond, Louiqa Raschid and Sahana Directors Brent Woodworth and Nuwan Waidyanatha the Sahana Software Foundation are able to provided dedicated remote and on-the-ground support as needed to complement any voluntary response from the community.

While we are waiting to hear the specific needs from partners, if you would like to help, you can familiarize yourself with the Sahana software. If you are currently in Nepal and want to help with Sahana, the best thing that you can currently do is to get in touch with local volunteer and community groups and organizations. There is a huge response and recovery effort which you can help with. By working with these organizations you will get an idea of what information needs to be shared (which typically starts with Excel spreadsheets!). This could help identify gaps which Sahana can fill!

You could also help out with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s efforts to map the areas affected by the earthquake – as Sahana uses these base maps.

I will post further updates as the situation develops.

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