Sahana Software Foundation presentation to the World Conference on Disaster Management, Toronto, Canada, June 25, 2012, delivered by SSF CEO Mark Prutsalis

1. Making Chaos Manageable
“No innovation matters more
than that which saves lives”
Avelino J. Cruz, Jr., Secretary of National Defense of the Philippines
on the use of Sahana following disastrous mudslides in 2005
Mark Prutsalis
President & CEO, Sahana Software Foundation
http://SahanaFoundation.org

2. Agenda
☀ Introductions
☀ Disaster Trends and Opportunities
☀ Humanitarian Free & Open Source Software
☀ The New Information Environment
☀ Four Case Studies
☀ US National Library of Medicine People Locator
☀ City of New York Office of Emergency Management Sahana
Emergency Management System
☀ Los Angeles Emergency Management Department’s Give2LA
☀ International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) Resource
Management System

3. Sahana Software Foundation
☀ The Sahana Software Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-
profit organization dedicated to the mission of saving
lives by providing information management solutions
that enable organizations and communities to better
prepare for and respond to disasters.
☀ We develop free and open source software and provide
services that help solve concrete problems and bring
efficiencies to disaster response coordination between
governments, aid organizations, civil society and disaster
survivors themselves.

4. The Historic Trigger: 2004 Indian
Ocean Earthquake & Tsunami
☀ At least 226,000 dead
☀ Up to 5 million people
lost their homes, or
access to food and
water
☀ 1 million people left
without a means to
make a living
☀ At least $7.5 billion in
the cost of damages
“Facts and Figures: Asian Tsunami Disaster”
New Scientist, 20 January 2005

5. Sahana first deployed for
Sri Lanka tsunami response

6. Disaster Trends
☀ World’s urban population will reach 6.4 billion by 2050 (that’s 70%
of the world’s projected population of 9.2 billion)1
☀ World’s population and economic centers are concentrated in “vulnerable cities near earthquake
faults, on river deltas or along tropical coasts.”2
☀ Growing vulnerability to an increased incidence of costly disasters.
☀ By 2050 the city populations exposed to tropical cyclones or earthquakes will more than double,
rising from 11% to 16% of the world’s population.3
☀ By 2070, seven of the ten greatest urban concentrations of economic assets that are exposed to
coastal flooding will be in the developing world (vs. none in 2005). Assets exposed to flooding
will rise from 5% of the world GDP to 9%.4
☀ Global annual disaster spending will triple to $185 billion by 21003
☀ Spending on urban infrastructure to approach $350 trillion over next 30 years5
☀ 2011 was costliest year ever for disasters (earthquakes in Japan & New Zealand, flooding in
China, Australia & Thailand, tornadoes in US) 2
☀ Five of ten costliest disasters have occurred in last five years2
☀ 20% of aid is now spent responding to disasters; only 0.7% is spent on mitigation2
☀ President Obama declared record 99 disaster declarations in 20112
1
United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects, 2007
2
the Economist, January 14, 2012
3
United Nations & World Bank, Natural Hazards, UnNatural Disasters : The Economics of Effective Prevention, 2010
4
OECD, Ranking Port Cities with High Exposure and Vulnerability to Climate Extremes : Exposure Estimates, 2007
5
Booz & Co., Reinventing the City to Combat Climate Change, 2010

7. Disasters are
A Growth Industry
There is both Opportunity
And Responsibility

8. What is a Disaster?
☀ “A disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a
society, causing widespread human, material or
environmental losses which exceeds the ability of the
affected society to cope using only its own resources”
- Source: UNDP
☀ “Any Event or Circumstance (happening with or without
warning) that causes or threatens death or injury,
disruption to the community on such a scale that the
effects cannot be dealt with by the emergency services,
local authorities and other organizations as part of their
normal day to day activities”
- UK Home Office

9. Aftermath of Disasters
☀ The trauma caused by waiting to
be found or find the next of kin
☀ Coordinating all aid groups and
helping them to operate
effectively as one
☀ Managing the multiple of requests
from the affected region and
matching them effectively to the
pledges of assistance
☀ Tracking the location of all
shelters, warehouses, hospitals
and medical facilities, etc.

10. Tasks Facing Responders
☀ Search and Rescue ☀ Tracing Missing Persons
☀ Evacuation ☀ Trauma Counseling
☀ Setting up Shelters ☀ Assuring Security
☀ Distribution of Aid ☀ Protecting Children
☀ Management of Donations ☀ Restoration of Utilities
Life Saving decisions need to be made fast!
The best decisions are the most informed ones

11. How Can Technology Help?
☀ Scalable management of information
☀ No stacks of forms or files to manage
☀ Efficient distribution of information
☀ Accessibility of information on demand
☀ Automatic assessment and aggregation
☀ No delays for collation or calculations
☀ Live situational awareness
☀ Reports are updated in real time as data is entered

12. Humanitarian Free & Open Source
Software Solutions
☀ What is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS):
☀ The code is available for anyone to use and modify
☀ Free Software Foundation: “free speech, not free beer”
☀ Humanitarian FOSS is:
☀ application of FOSS principles for charitable purposes
☀ Aligned to Red Cross Code of Conduct
☀ Many HFOSS Solutions providers

13. Common Technology & Features
☀ Multiple Environments
☀ Linux, Windows, OSX
☀ PortableApps, VMWare
☀ Cloud/EC2
☀ Translation & L10n
☀ Alternate character sets
☀ Right-to-left scripting
☀ Open Data Standards
☀ KML, EMS, GeoRSS, WPS
☀ EDXL, CAP, JSON, XML
☀ Mobile Accessibility
☀ J2ME, HTML5
☀ IOS, Android

14. Haiti Earthquake
and the
New Information Environment
January 12, 2010; 4: 53 PM
Magnitude 7.0

15. The New Disaster Information
Environment
☀ Government & Emergency Services relief capacity has
been exceeded or crippled
☀ To meet response requirements, the boundary of the
effort extends to external groups (NGOs, civil society,
foreign aid, UN agencies)
☀ Core Decision Makers need to consult a wider group and
gather information from nontraditional “uninitiated”
sources for better Situational Awareness
CROWDSOURCING & SOCIAL MEDIA
OPEN SOURCE & OPEN STANDARDS

16. Where are the Survivors and Who Needs
Assistance?

17. Missing and Found Persons
☀ After Katrina, 52 distinct missing persons web sites.
☀ After Haiti quake - HaitianQuake.com - scraped sites to
create a master site of all sources of information
☀ Google Person Finder absorbed and extended
☀ PFIF key to interoperability between systems, including
Sahana-based Haiti Earthquake People Location (HEPL)
PFIF

18. Project 4636 & Tweak the Tweet
☀ Leveraged
☀ Global Volunteers
☀ Social Media & “Crowdsourcing”
☀ Accomplishments:
☀ Structured data from
crowdsourcing
☀ Found actionable information from
public sources
☀ Highlighted coordination between
different groups each with
different skills and capabilities for
a humanitarian purpose.
☀ Bringing together non-traditional
and traditional emergency
response community

19. Best Practices:
Leveraging New Technologies
☀ How do you understand in 140 characters:
☀ Source/credibility, verification, validation, location,
prioritization, categorization, causation and
responsibility
☀ Challenge: How do you appropriately integrate
publicly available information with trusted
systems and sources?

20. Crisis Mapping in Haiti
☀ High-resolution Satellite Imagery
available quickly (26 hrs)
☀ OpenStreetMap volunteers used this & old
printed maps to quickly cover Port-au-Prince
☀ These were made available as
basemaps on handheld GPS
devices

21. Open Street Map – Project Haiti

22. Open Street Maps: Port au Prince
10 May 2010

23. Crisis Mapping in Haiti Lessons
☀ Leveraged global volunteer community to provide
accurate and current data – “crowdsourced” – by
experts in GIS
☀ Best geographic information after disasters may
come from publicly curated sources like OSM
☀ Standby Task Force and Humanitarian
OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) today provide rapid
crisis mapping solutions for governments and UN
agencies following disasters.
☀ Sahana software supports the humanitarian geo-
spatial data model used by OSM which allows
Sahana to import and export POIs with OSM.

24. Where are the functioning hospitals and
what is their status?

25. Sahana Geo-locate the
Hospitals Challenge
☀ Started with list of 157 hospitals in Haiti scraped
from PAHO, MSPP, UN OCHA, OSM, ReliefWeb
☀ 100 with no known coordinates (lat/long)
☀ Challenge: geo-locate them by any means
possible
☀ Took 24 hours to “find” all but three
☀ Solutions creative; descriptions in news articles,
reconciliation with OSM, local knowledge, telephone
calls, e-mail, educated guesses
☀ Geo-rectification by GIS expert using World Bank
provided high resolution flyover imagery

26. Hospital Management Systems
☀ Multiple systems fed data into a “Master
List” maintained by US HHS, handed
over to MSPP
☀ Crowdsourcing solutions can assist
addressing critical information gaps in a
rapid and timely manner
☀ Open data standards-based solutions
allow for better sharing of information
across diverse organizations
MASTER
☀ EDXL-HAVE data standard LIST

27. Global Health Facility Registry
☀ Create a List of EVERY Health Facility in the World
☀ Builds on the EDXL-HAVE based Sahana Solution
proven in Haiti
☀ Hospital Registry
☀ “Web Services” to import/export data (RESTful API)
☀ Matches requirements identified for the Global Health
Facility Database Initiative that came out of the April
2010 World Health Care Congress in Washington
☀ Crowdsourcing the data collection
☀ Collaboratively curated by a trusted network of
government, NGOs, companies and communities.

28. Best Practices: Open Standards and
Information Sharing Agreements/MOUs
Standards Organizations
Missing Persons Community
of Interest 2012
Safe and Well
EDXL-
EDXL-
TEC
TEC
PFIF
PFIF
Travax
Haiti Hospital Data
(Proposed) 2010
Google
EDXL- Resource
Sahana HAVE
Finder
March 21, 2012 28

29. Haiti Earthquake & The
“New Information Environment”
New information and communication technologies, new information providers, and new
international communities of interest emerged during the Haiti earthquake response
that will forever change how humanitarian information is collected, shared, and
managed. Humanitarian responders used social networking media, mobile phone text
messaging, open source software applications, and commercial satellite imagery more than
ever before. Outside of the established international humanitarian community, volunteers and
participatory reporters from the affected population became new sources of data and
information. Humanitarian organizations, host governments, and the donor community
will all need to adapt to this new information environment.
US Department of State Humanitarian Information Unit, White Paper: Haiti Earthquake: Breaking New
Ground in the Humanitarian Information Landscape, July 2010
New partners are offering faster, more effective means of analyzing an ever-increasing
volume and velocity of data. The challenge ahead is how to create an effective interface
between these resources, and create an eco-system where each actor understands its role. It
will not be easy. Volunteer and technical communities (V&TCs) like OpenStreetMap,
Sahana and CrisisMappers approach problems in ways that challenge the status quo.
UN Foundation, Disaster Relief 2.0:
The Future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies, 2011

30. Four Case Studies:
Organizations Using Sahana
☀ US National Library of Medicine’s People LocatorTM
☀ City of New York’s Office of Emergency
Management Sahana Emergency Management
System
☀ Los Angeles Emergency Management
Department’s Give2LA website
☀ International Federation of the Red Cross and Red
Crescent Society (IFRC) Asia Pacific Region’s
Resource Management System

31. US National Library of Medicine
People Locator Project
Family Reunification After A Disaster
☀Hospital Use Case
☀ Original focus, in conjunction with local Bethesda
Hospitals’ Emergency Preparedness Partnership
☀ Goals
☀ Log disaster victims arriving at the hospital
☀ Assist family reunification counselors
☀ Reduce inquiry load on rest of hospital staff
☀Community Use Case
☀ First activated in response to the Haitian
Earthquake
☀ For disasters of larger scope:
☀ Provide a registry and tools for search and reporting
by public or field workers
☀ Promote data exchange among registries

32. US National Library of Medicine
People Locator Project

33. US National Library of Medicine
People Locator Project
Hospital Use Community Use
Search & NLM’s Data
Triage
Report at ReUniteTM Google
Station
Vesuvius iPhone “Person
Software
/PL App Finder”
LIVE SITE at
HTTP://PL.NLM.NIH.GOV
TriagePicTM

34. Recent People Locator Deployments
☀ Sendong, Philippines, December, 2011 ☀ Joplin, Missouri, May 2011
☀ Turkey Earthquake, October 2011 ☀ Tohoku Earthquake, March 2011

35. NYC OEM & the Sahana Emergency
Management System (SEMS)

36. Hurricane Irene – 2011

49. WFP & Government of Philippines
RGIMS

50. EVHAC – European Voluntary
Humanitarian Aid Corps

51. Conclusion: Benefits of HFOSS
☀ Starting Point
☀ NLM estimates building on Sahana platform saved
them over a year of development
☀ NYC Registry Program built quickly from existing code
☀ Sharing with other orgs
☀ IFRC RMS spreading to other regions, including US
☀ NYC distributing SEMS to Regional Catastrophic
Planning Team and other regions/big cities
☀ Give2LA expanding from City to County
☀ Sahana Software Foundation a trusted partner
☀ Non-profit 501(c)(3) and licensing model
☀ These systems are all freely available from the SSF

52. Unique Development Model:
Virtuous Circle of Contributions
Traditional Open Source Development Model
Branch for Org B
TRUNK
Branch for Org A
☀ Can result in multiple branches, each needing support
and expertise to maintain

53. Unique Development Model:
Virtuous Circle of Contributions
Sahana Open Source Development Model:
Org B Branch
TRUNK
Org A Branch
☀ Features & fixes developed by one organization are available to
all future Sahana users
☀ Enabled by Sahana Software Foundation's 501(c)(3) status &
supported by Software Grant Agreements & Contributor License
Agreements

54. Free and Open Source Software Projects
Freedom to use, analyze, modify and re-distribute
Available for everybody at no cost
Open for research and development
Collaboratively developed by a Global community
Mark Prutsalis
President & CEO, Sahana Software Foundation
http://SahanaFoundation.org
Mark@SahanaFoundation.org
@SahanaFOSS #Sahana
http://www.slideshare.net/SahanaFOSS