The problems faced by both the victims of and responders to disasters are numerous. Beyond the trauma, this involves having to coordinate, manage and track things. In countries at risk of being affected by large scale sudden onset disasters, these problems can be massive and overwhelming.
Technology can address many of the data management challenges and requirements by providing solutions that are scalable, efficient, automatic and by providing live data and situational awareness to both emergency managers and the community.
The core functionality of Sahana developed for use in Sri Lanka endures to this day. Sahana provides a single database for recording who is doing what where – identifying what the needs are – where people are located – and where assistance is needed. The core capabilities of Sahana include an organization registry, for relief agencies to record their contact information and where they are working. This module also records what services these organizations are providing. Another piece of core functionality is a missing persons and a disaster victims registry for tracking both the missing and the found, those registered at shelters and those needing assistance in family reunification.
Longer-term
Clear structure helps maintainability
Easy to Install on a Laptop In-built Scheduler Database Abstraction Layer: Supports Multiple Databases for easy access to legacy data
Note the use of string substitution to define the tablename More effort at 1 st but makes subsequent resources much faster to copy/paste
Maintainability is key: the software is usually customised locally so it needs to be clearly understood by others
If a string is used multiple times then define as a constant as terminology can be different in different contexts
Contrasts with a Waterfall method where formal specifications have code written & unit tested & then released to users in big chunks
![Humanitarian-FOSS and Rapid Application Development 4 July 2010, Academia Sinica Michael Howden and Fran Boon [email_address] [email_address]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/hfossandrad-100811173325-phpapp02/85/hfoss-and-rad-1-320.jpg)
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