SSF 2011 Annual Report

“No innovation matters more
than that which saves lives”

Avelino J. Cruz, Jr., Secretary of National Defense in the Philippines
on the use of Sahana following disastrous mudslides in 2005

Sahana Software Foundation 2011 Annual Report 1

2 Sahana Software Foundation 2011 Annual Report

The Sahana Software Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, established in
2009 to serve the needs and requirements of a diverse group of customers:
• Government agencies and jurisdictions at the national, provincial or state, and
local levels
• UN Agencies, international and local charitable organizations (NGOs)
• Communities & disaster victims
• Technology companies & software developers

Our Mission is to help alleviate human suffering by giving emergency managers,
disaster response professionals and communities access to the information that they
need to better prepare for and respond to disasters through the development and
promotion of free and open source software and open standards.

Our Vision is to build and sustain a global open and collaborative community of
contributors to information and communications technologies for disaster management,
in order to:
• Support the needs of Sahana customers through promoting and developing
innovative open source solutions for disaster information management
• Support the adoption of open standards for data exchange between information
systems to manage disaster data.

HISTORY

Sahana software was originally developed by members of the Sri Lankan IT community
who wanted to find a way to help their country recover in the immediate aftermath of
the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. The Sahana community has since
grown to include experts in emergency and disaster management as full partners in the
software development process. This is extremely unique in the governance of software
projects, and a unique strength of the Sahana Software Foundation.

The Lanka Software Foundation (http://opensource.lk) was the first owner of the
intellectual property making up Sahana software, and under its stewardship, Sahana
software grew into a global free and open source software project supported by
hundreds of volunteer contributors from dozens of countries and it supported national
and local authorities and relief agencies in their response to numerous large-scale,
sudden-onset disasters. In early 2009, the directors of the Lanka Software Foundation
decided to allow Sahana to spin off into its own organization. The Sahana Software
Foundation was established in 2009 by an initial board of directors as a non-profit
organization registered in the State of California to be the ongoing caretaker of Sahana
as a global humanitarian free and open source solution.


The word “Sahana” means

“relief”

or

“compassionate help”

in Sinhala,

one of the national languages of

Sri Lanka


The Sahana Software Foundation is

Board of Directors Members
Brent Woodworth (Chair), US David Bitner, US
Mark Prutsalis (President), US Praneeth Bodduluri, India
Martin Thomsen (Secretary), Denmark Francis Boon, UK
Louiqa Raschid (Treasurer), US Ravith Botejue, Sri Lanka
David Bitner, US Don Cameron, Australia
Chamindra de Silva, Sri Lanka Mifan Careem, Sri Lanka
Mifan Careem, Sri Lanka Maria D’Albert*, US
Darmendra Pradeeper, Sri Lanka Trishan de Lanerolle, US
Leslie Hawthorn, US Laura Lanford*, US
Chamindra de Silva, Sri Lanka
Board Emeritus: Ravindra de Silva, Canada
Gavin Treadgold (2009-2011) Darmendra Pradeeper, Sri Lanka
Sanjiva Weerawarana (2009-2010) Sudheera Fernando, Sri Lanka
Joseph Fonseka, Sri Lanka
Executive Committees Graeme Foster*, Vietnam
Leslie Hawthorn*, US
Board Development Chad Heuschober, US
Brent Woodworth (Chair) Michael Howden, New Zealand
Mark Prutsalis Mahesh Kaluarachchi, Sri Lanka
Maria D’Albert Avni Khatri, US
Shikhar Kohli*, India
Community Development
Leslie Hawthorn (Chair) Dominic König, Sweden
David Bitner Laura Lanford*, US
Patricia Tressel Ishan Liyanage, Sri Lanka
Michael Howden Greg Miernicki, US
Darlene McCullough Glenn Pearson, US
Mark Prutsalis, US
Development Eero Pykalainen*, Malaysia
Mark Prutsalis (Chair) Louiqa Raschid, US
Louiqa Raschid Eric Rasmussen, US
Chamindra de Silva Antonio Santos*, Portugal
Martin Thomsen, Denmark
Financial Oversight Gavin Treadgold, New Zealand
Louiqa Raschid (Chair) Patricia Tressel, US
David Bitner Nuwan Waidyanatha, Sri Lanka
Paul Phillips Brent Woodworth, US
Martin Thomsen Tom Worthington, US
Dale Zuehls Dan Zubey*, US

* elected February 2012


Project Management Committees Volunteers

Sahana Agasti We are grateful to the following persons
Chad Heuschober (Chair) for helping to fill important informal
Chamindra de Silva support teams and positions:
Darlene McCullough
Greg Miernicki Admin (Infrastructure Support) Team
Glenn Pearson Praneeth Bodduluri
Mark Prutsalis Francis Boon
Charles Wisniewski Chamindra de Silva
Darlene McCullough
Sahana Eden Mark Prutsalis
Francis Boon (Chair) Gavin Treadgold
Praneeth Bodduluri Patricia Tressel
Chamindra de Silva Dan Zubey
Graeme Foster
Michael Howden Accounts Administrator
Dominic König Abhishek Arora
Mark Prutsalis
Patricia Tressel Community Call Coordinator
Michael Howden
Sahana Standards & Interoperability
Chamindra de Silva (Chair) GSOC Administrators/Coordinators
David Bitner David Bitner
Praneeth Bodduluri Mark Prutsalis
Francis Boon Michael Howden (2011)
Mifan Careem Laura Lanford (2012)
Chad Heuschober Darlene McCullough
Greg Miernicki
Glenn Pearson Security Response Team
Mark Prutsalis Francis Boon
Louiqa Raschid Chamindra de Silva
Nilushan Silva Greg Miernicki
Nuwan Waidyanatha David Nalley
Charles Wisniewski

Strategic Planning Team
Maria D’Albert (lead)
John Bourdeaux
Marin Byrne
Patrick Kirk
Sue Lehmann
Andy Mantis
Milena Markova-Brett
Liliana Petrova

Wiki Administrator
Darlene McCullough


Message to the Sahana Community from Brent Woodworth,
Chair of the Sahana Software Foundation
It is my pleasure to congratulate all of you on an outstanding
2011 for the Sahana Software Foundation. Over the past year
we have seen continued growth in the level of awareness and
utilization of Sahana Software throughout the world. Our May
2011 annual meeting in Portugal allowed us to reaffirm our
commitment and see some immediate success with the
adoption of Sahana by the local volunteer fire service.

Our support base in the United States continued to grow with
an agreement by the City of Los Angeles to utilize Sahana
Eden as the basis for their new donation and volunteer
management systems. In New York City (NYC) a real-life of Brent Woodworth, Chair
test of Sahana occurred when Hurricane Irene struck the East
Coast and the New York City Office of Emergency Management (OEM) turned to Sahana
to help manage the event. Internationally, we also experienced a major success with the
adoption of Sahana by the International Federation of the Red Cross for resource
management. This deployment gained the attention of the American Red Cross and
drove their commitment to begin piloting the use of Sahana in their US operations. As
we approach our May 2012 meeting in NYC, I am pleased to report that NYC OEM is in
the process of sharing their positive Sahana experience with multiple cities throughout
the northeastern United States. We are also seeing significant interest by other major
US Cities and Counties along with international locations and organizations as we
continue our growth path in 2012.

Everyone should take a minute and reflect on this tremendous record. As a non-profit
organization with very limited funding but some of the most dedicated and talented
individuals in the open source and humanitarian relief community, your accomplishments
are beyond compare. The systems you help to develop and implement will save many
lives, accelerate recovery, improve response, and build resiliency in cities, communities,
countries, and organizations throughout the world.

Moving ahead, many challenges will need to be faced. Of ultimate importance is not
losing focus on the reason Sahana exists – to help those in need during times of
disaster. We must work together and collaborate to deliver the best possible solutions
(well designed, easy to use, tested, reliable, sustainable) to situations faced by
individuals, communities, governments, and organizations when preparing for,
responding to, and recovering from both man-made and natural hazard events.

Finally, while so many of you have done such an outstanding job this year, I want to
recognize the leadership and unwavering commitment of our President and CEO. Mark
Prutsalis has led us through each challenge we have faced with professionalism,
optimism, encouragement, and personal commitment. The Sahana Software Foundation
could never have achieved the success we now enjoy without Mark. We all owe Mark a
huge debt of gratitude and should consider ourselves incredibly lucky to have him
leading our organization.

Best regards,
Brent


Haiti Earthquake Response Recognized

The Sahana Software Foundation’s response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake was
recognized by the US Department of State and the UN Foundation as uniquely effective,
valuable and enduring in our innovative approach to information management after
disasters.

“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

NLM’s Haiti Earthquake People Locator (Sahana Vesuvius)

“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


Sahana Eden Haiti Hospital Registry

“What happened next is critical to lessons learned from the response. Sahana made the
data available in open data formats via several feed formats, including XML, KML,
GeoRSS, and the XML schema designed for tracking hospital data, EDXL -HAVE. This
resource became one the best resources for health facility data for the next month.
Over 8,000 unique individuals visited the site or pulled from these feeds.
Crowdsourcing had taken a responsibility that would have taken OCHA days to
complete and reduced it to a little more than a day of work. In the process, a group of
V&TCs had built a process for locating health facilities—a process that is now being
revised for the next disaster.”
UN Foundation, Disaster Relief 2.0:
The Future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies, 2011


Sahana Projects

The Sahana Software Foundation Board of Directors officially created Project
Management Committees for two Sahana open source software projects in 2010
Sahana Agasti in PHP and Sahana Eden in Python.

Sahana Agasti
The Agasti project seeks to create long-term “stand up”
solutions, specifically, deployments that can be used for
long-term planning by governments and NGOs. Two good
examples of this goal are the US National Library of Medicine
deployment in Washington, DC and the NYC Office of
Emergency Management deployment in New York
Fun Fact: Agasti product names are all volcanoes,
inspired both by the disaster management domain and
because “Agasti” means “Mountain Thrower” from Sanskrit

Chad Heuschober, Chair
The current Agasti products are:
Vesuvius – Vesuvius is focused on the disaster preparedness and response needs of the
medical community, contributing to family reunification and assisting with hospital
triage. Development of Vesuvius is led by the US National Library of Medicine as part of
the Bethesda Hospitals Emergency Preparedness Partnership to serve area hospitals,
medical facilities and jurisdictions with a need to tie intake records with missing/found
persons reports submitted by the public.
Mayon – Mayon provides an emergency personnel and resource management solution
that is highly scalable to manage large numbers of events, persons and resources. Its
intended to serve professional emergency management organizations in large
municipalities and jurisdictions charged with preparedness, response, recovery and
mitigation responsibilities. Mayon is being deployed by the City of New York’s Office of
Emergency Management in support of its all-hazards shelter management plan and
distributed to local jurisdictions through a Regional Catastrophic Planning Team branded
as the Sahana Emergency Management System.


People LocatorTM Project at the US National Library of Medicine
The US National Library of Medicine (NLM) is using Sahana Vesuvius to
support disaster preparedness solutions focused on the needs for family
reunification with a particular focus on the needs of hospitals, including
triage, enabling capture of photos, exchange of data across facilities for
use in US-hospital-focused catastrophic situations.

While their primary mission has been to support the Bethesda Hospitals Emergency
Preparedness Partnership (BHEPP), the NLM hosted People Locator has also supported
the public use of the Vesuvius People Locator system for disaster response activities
both inside and outside the United States, including the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and in
2011, earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, Japan, and Turkey, the Joplin Missouri
Tornado, and Typhoon Sendong in the Philippines.


Sahana & Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Irene was a large and destructive hurricane that impacted the Caribbean and
east coast of the United States during August 2011, and making its final landfall in New
York City. Irene caused an estimated $15.6 billion in damage in the United States – the
sixth costliest hurricane in US history.

The following article from the October 2011 issue of Catastrophic Response, the
newsletter of the Regional Catastrophic Planning Team from New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania and Connecticut, describes how Sahana Mayon software was used by the
City of New York’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) in their response to the
Hurricane:

NYC OEM sent over 1,000,000 messages to 130,000 City
employees to mobilize close to 6000 staff to run the 155
different shelter and evacuation center operations during the
Coastal Storm Plan (CSP) activation for Hurricane Irene.

The NYC Sahana Emergency Management System is a web-
based computer program that allows us to create staffing
assignments using pre-identified staff and facilities. It is also
used to track shelterees and staff when a disaster actually
happens and shelters come online. It was built using Free and
Open Source and has been adapted for NYC. NYC OEM has
been working with the City University of New York (CUNY)
over the past year to completely redesign and enhance the
capabilities of this system. Just as we completed development
of our next generation NYC Sahana, we were given the rare
opportunity to test it in a live activation for Hurricane Irene.

As Irene approached, City staff would need to be notified of the CSP’s activation of our
sheltering system. This complex process had previously taken a month of manual labor, but
Sahana reduced that to a matter of hours. To appropriately assign staff, sufficient lead-time is
required in a hurricane scenario and it is at this level that we identified our greatest gaps.

Once staff and shelterees began arriving, Sahana started its other mission: tracking the
thousands of staff and shelterees entering the CSP shelter system. As each site came online and
began entering data, they would appear in real time snapshots in the custom dashboards built
for Sahana; the data received was invaluable.

Lessons learned and best practices from Irene have been incorporated into the NYC Sahana
application. Sahana is going to be shared with our entire RCPGP Program area and beyond
for free through the new Sahana Whole product Solution project being developed. This project
is taking all the software necessary to install the Sahana Emergency Management System and
packaging it with comprehensive, user-friendly documentation and training describing how to
install, manage, and use Sahana for events like Irene.
Catastrophic Response, Vol. 9, October 2011
http://www.regionalcatplanning.org/documents/CatastrophicResponse_Newsletter_v9.pdf


Sahana Eden
Sahana Eden is a flexible humanitarian platform with a rich feature set which can be
rapidly customized to adapt to existing processes and integrate with existing systems
to provide effective solutions for critical humanitarian needs management either prior to
or during a crisis.
Sahana Eden’s features are designed to help Disaster and Emergency Management
practitioners to better mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters more
effectively and efficiently. Sahana Eden can provide valuable solutions for practitioners
in Emergency Management, Humanitarian Relief and Social Development domains.
Fun Fact: Eden’s milestone releases are named after rivers in England.
Previous releases have been named “Banwell”, “Crane” and “Ellen”.
The next releases will be named “Medway” and “Avon”.

“Looking back, 2011 has been a huge year for the
Eden project. We have seen growing usage by
large organisations who are funding core
capabilities - the International Federation of the
Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies sponsored a
Resource Management System, Project Tool &
Assessment Data Analysis, the City of Los
Angeles sponsored a Volunteer & Donations
Management system, the Government of Nepal
sponsored a Climate Change portal, and the Fran Boon, Chair
Consortium of British Humanitarian Agencies
sponsored HELIOShare to share Logistics information amongst each
other.

The software has been used to respond to the Chilean Wildfires & the
Japan Tsunami.

We have also maintained our strong volunteer base, working with the
Portuguese volunteer firefighters, winning Random Hacks of Kindness in
Austin with our work supporting CERT, participating actively in both
Google’s student programmes: GSoC & GCI and also writing a freely-
available book: the Sahana Eden Essential Guide.”
Fran Boon, Chair, Sahana Eden Project


The Sahana Eden Essential Guide

The Sahana Eden Essential Guide was written for decision
makers looking for an appropriate solution for disaster
management, those who are deploying Sahana Eden, and
those who are extending Sahana Eden for more specialized
solutions or want to contribute to the project. It was
written by Sahana Members Fran Boon, Dominic König,
Michael Howden, Pat Tressel and Shikhar Kohli, supported
by FLOSSManuals and the Google Open Source Programs
Office, during the October 2011 Google Documentation
Summit, held at Google’s Mountain View, California,
Headquarters. The Essential Guide is a resource that
makes it easier for organizations to adopt Sahana Eden
software,

The Sahana Eden Essential Guide Team at the Google Doc Summit: Pat Tressel, Fran Boon, Shikhar
Kohli, Dominic König, Belinda Lopez, Eli Lev and Michael Howden


“Faced with disaster situations, like
those lived by our country in the last
days, the need for information becomes
imperative. With this Smart Center, we
can significantly reduce response times
for the persons that search, and
optimize volunteer work.”
Lorenza Donoso, President of the Chilean Red Cross
on the Sahana Eden-based Smart Center solution,
used in response to wildfires in early 2012

“Sahana [Eden] is blowing my mind. I
can’t think of any project we’ve done
that we couldn’t build on this platform.”
@CDRP_FSU
(Center for Disaster Risk Policy at Florida State University)


Sahana & the Tohoku earthquake & tsunami
On March 11, 2011, northeastern Japan was struck by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, one
of the largest ever to hit Japan and which triggered a powerful tsunami with waves that
reached heights of up to 133 feet. The disaster killed over 15,000 persons, injured over
25,000, destroyed hundreds of thousands of buildings, and triggered a serious of
nuclear accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Complex that required
mass evacuations. The World Bank has estimated the total economic losses from the
disaster at $235 billion, making it most expensive natural disaster in history.

In response to this disaster, the Sahana Software Foundation and Sahana Eden Project
supported an effort by the Hyogontech open source group based in Kobe, and IBM Japan
to provide a Japanese version of Sahana Eden software for use by government and
responding charitable organizations (NPOs). The site was hosted by IBM Japan’s cloud
hosting services at http //sahana.jp and included information on the location of shelters,
volunteer activities, soup kitchens, and organizations.

The National Library of Medicine’s hosted Sahana Vesuvius-based People Locator was
also set up to allow for searching or reporting on missing and found persons information,
and was also linked to the linked Google Person Finder registry. It collected information
on over 600,000 persons.


IFRC’s Resource Management System
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) developed a
Resource Management System in Sahana Eden to allow their National Societies to share
information on their Inventory, Assets, Staff and Volunteers. Neighboring National
Societies and the IFRC can quickly see what is available in the event of a major disaster.
This information is blended with data from other Geographic Information Systems (GIS),
such as Population Density, Rainfall and Topography to allow for a more informed
planning of the response.

The solution allows agencies to share a common server, yet retain full control over their
data and who can have access to it (i.e. a multi-tenancy system). The open source nature
of the software was important because it meant there was no vendor lock-in and the
software was easy to maintain. For this deployment the Sahana team deployed using
Amazon Web Services in the regional data center to guarantee low latency.


Sahana Standards and Interoperability Project
The Sahana Standards and Interoperability Project is
responsible for issues of interoperability between Sahana
projects, standards compliance, and support for Open Standards
both within Sahana Software Foundation projects and with
external projects, such as Open Street Map or Google Person
Finder. Major activities in 2011 include:

Interoperability Workshop at ISCRAM
The Sahana Software Foundation helped to organize and chair a
workshop on systems interoperability at the 2011 Conference
on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management
(ISCRAM), held in Lisbon, Portugal. The session was co-chaired Chamindra de Silva,
by Sahana Standards Committee Chair Chamindra de Silva. Chair
Sahana was represented in Lisbon by Mark Prutsalis, Greg
Miernicki and Dominic Konig, with a large support team from NLM participating remotely,
during which the exchange of data between Google Persona Finder and Sahana Eden
and Vesuvius was tested using the PFIF data standard.

Participants at the Interoperability Workshop at ISCRAM, May 2011

Missing Persons Community of Interest
A technical working group around missing and found persons information reporting is
taking a proactive approach in setting up an agreement on standards and data sharing
between such major stakeholders as the ICRC and American Red Cross with technology
solutions providers including Google, Facebook, and the Sahana Software Foundation
through its Standards Project. The agreed framework defines the data standards upon
which systems will be built, along with agreements of what information will be allowed
as sharable between organizations and procedures for how to turn on and off shared
data based on governance decisions and international standards for humanitarian
actions, privacy concerns and local and national laws.


Sahana Community Development Programs

The Sahana Software Foundation is dependent on the highly diversified skills of its
community members who specialize in a broad range of disciplines. Our ability to attract,
retain, reward, and motivate such individuals is fundamental to the long-term success of
our Foundation. Sahana’s Community Development Programs serve to coordinate these
efforts to foster relationships with organizations and institutions that produce new
Sahana developers and active community members and serves to recruit, retain and
reward Sahana Software Foundation members and other contributors. In turn, these
resources give us the ability to help organizations and communities to better prepare for
and respond to disasters while engaging a broad community that thinks about
humanitarian issues.

Google Summer of CodeTM
Our role as a mentoring organization for the
Google Summer of Code (GSOC) is the highlight of
our community development efforts. Sahana has
been participating in this summer internship
program for university students every year (since
2006).

In this time, Google Summer of Code students
have become core contributors as well as
members of our Project Management Committees
and our board of directors. Historically, over half
of our almost 50 former students have stayed involved with the Sahana Software
Foundation for at least one year after their internship ended, many for much longer; 8
have become members of one of our Project Management Committees; 4 have become
Members of the Sahana Software Foundation; 1 serves on our Board of Directors. 10
former students have become mentors in later years for our Google Summer of Code
program and at least 8 have helped mentor our Google Code-In program the past two
years. This retention rate is remarkable amongst organizations that participate in the
Google Summer of Code and is a testament to the value that we place on this program
and the care our mentors take to provide a good experience for our students.

We mentored six students in 2011. These students and their projects were:

Abubhav Aggarwal (India)
Fabio Albuquerque (Brazil)
Shiv Deepak (India)
Ramindu Deshapriya (Sri Lanka)
Pratyush Nigam (India)
W.A. Chinthaka Rukshan Weeakkody (Sri Lanka)


Thoughts on the Sahana
Google Summer of Code Program

“It’s a terrific feeling to be associated with a program as
wonderful as GSoC for two consecutive years. During
GSoC 2010, I thought that like many other web
applications, Sahana Eden should have its own interface
for installations and changing settings. It was great to see
my idea transformed into solid, working code! I hope that
websetup will go a long way in making Eden more user
friendly.”
Shikhar Kohli (2010 GSOC student, 2011 Mentor, 2012 Member)

“I am especially pleased to share that one of our student’s
code was of sufficient quality and readiness that it was
successfully used during the NYC Hurricane Irene
deployment and was merged into the mainline Mayon
trunk. Way to go, Fábio!”
Chad Heuschober (Chair, Sahana Agasti Project, 2011 Mentor)


Random Hacks of Kindness
The Sahana Software Foundation has been a
participant in Random Hacks of Kindness, a
series of weekend coding events organized and
founded by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, NASA and
the World Bank, since it began in 2009, and
each RHOK event has provided an opportunity
to both showcase Sahana software’s capabilities, as well as extend our broad, open
source community base. The Sahana community was well represented at RHOK events
in 2011, which saw 30 cities worldwide participating, and had the honor of winning first
place at the RHOK 2011 Austin (Texas, USA) event.

FRAN BOON BRIEFS PARTICIPANTS AT RHOK OXFORD
ON THE SAHANA EDEN SOLUTION

The Sahana Eden-based solution built on an idea that began at RHOK Chicago in 2010,
where members of the Chicago CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) attended
the Chicago event, with a problem statement on how to better manage and unite the
base of CERT volunteers. There, they met some members of the Sahana Eden
community and discussed how the volunteer management module of Sahana Eden
might be extended and customized to meet their requirements. RHOK 2011 provided
an opportunity to continue the effort and work started in 2010.

The winning Sahana Eden/CERT RHOK team included CERT representatives led by 2012
SSF Member Laura Lanford, Rich Frizelis, Linda Haynie, Jeff Nathan, and Deborah
Shaddon; and a software development team led by Eden Chair Fran Boon: Kevin Doran,
Dominic König, Ryan Joy, Benton Porter, Michael Pratt and Marc Tamlyn.

The CERT solution has recently been adopted officially by Chicago’s CERT Chapter with a
view towards it becoming a nationwide solution for CERT management needs.


Grace Hopper Celebration Open Source Day
The Sahana Software Foundation has been one of
the leaders in helping to organize an Open Source
Day as part of the Annual Grace Hopper
Celebration of Women in Computing. These
efforts have been led by SSF Directors Louiqa
Raschid and Leslie Hawthorn, SSF President Mark
Prutsalis, and SSF Members Fran Boon, Avni
Khatri and Pat Tressel.

In 2010, the Sahana Software Foundation organized a one-day Codeathon for Humanity
to provide the opportunity for attendees of the Grace Hopper Celebration the
opportunity to code on Sahana software as a humanitarian open source project. The
2011 Grace Hopper Open Source Day, held on Saturday, November 12, at the Oregon
Convention Center, was a significant expansion of that program. In addition to talks
about open source, four other humanitarian free and open source software projects,
including the Google Crisis Response Team, the Haitian Women’s Peer-to-Peer Network,
Kids on Computers, and Systers provided facilitation for the second annual Codeathon
for Humanity. With the guidance of experienced mentors and facilitators from these
projects, Codeathon attendees wrote code together with their peers.

More than a dozen attendees worked on Sahana Eden, facilitated on site by Pat
Tressel and Peter Banka with remote support from a team of Eden contributors led
by Fran Boon via IRC (Internet Relay Chat) during the event. Mikel Maron of the
Humanitarian Open Street Map (HOT) also provided support remotely for participants
who worked on Open Street Map Potlatch integration with and an OSM importer for
Sahana Eden.

Google Code-In
The Google Code-In is a contest for pre-
university students to introduce them to all of
the things that go into a successful open
source project: code, documentation, outreach,
quality assurance, research, training,
translation and user interface. This program is
a great opportunity to get students excited
about contributing to a humanitarian free and
open source project like Sahana, and for us to get some sorely needed tasks completed.
Out of the 208 tasks that we posted for students in 2011, 193 were completed – which
is an amazing effort. This program has proven successful as a community development
program for both the students and for the Sahana Software Foundation. Our volunteer
accounts administrator, Abhishek Arora, is a Google Code-In contestant from 2010 and
one of the Grand Prize winners in 2011. Another Google Code-In contestant from 2010,
Tony Young, helped mentor our program this year.


The SahanaCampTM Program
SahanaCamp is a program of the Sahana Software Foundations Deployment and Training
Program. The main goal of the SahanaCamp program is to quick-start deployments of
Sahana software while building a local support community for local or national
emergency and disaster response organizations. A SahanaCamp may provide attendees
with:

• an understanding of how Sahana Software can help manage information before,
during and after disasters
• a practical technical workshop to provide instruction in how Sahana Software can
be deployed within and across organizations
• a forum to discuss and share best practices in the use of information tools for
disaster and emergency management, which may include simulations and
exercises.

A SahanaCamp is typically held over a 2- to 4-day period and provides a variety of
experiences for attendees to work with Sahana software from both a user and a
technical perspective. In 2011, we held the following SahanaCamps:

• SahanaCamp@ISCRAM – May 2011 – Lisbon, Portugal – held in conjunction with
the 7th ISCRAM conference, SahanaCamp@ISCRAM offered participants a disaster
workshop and hands-on experience with all three of Sahana Software products –
Mayon, Vesuvius and Eden. The experience of attending SahanaCamp@ISCRAM
has led to the nationwide adoption of Sahana Eden with the Bombeiros – the
National Association of Volunteer Firefighters – in Portugal.

• SahanaCamp LA – November 2011 – Los Angeles California – organized around
the adoption and deployment of Sahana software by the City of Los Angeles,
SahanaCamp LA provided training to a diverse group of attendees from
numerous organizations from the area and beyond, including the City of Los
Angeles IT Agency, the Los Angeles Fire Department, the City of Inglewood,
American Red Cross Chapters of Greater Los Angeles and Orange County
Southern California’s VOAD coordinator ENLA, IT consultants and GIS
professionals, Sahana community members and a representative from the UN
World Food Programme in Rome.


SahanaCamp@ISCRAM, May 2011

SahanaCamp LA, November 2011


Thank you to our 2011 Donors and Sponsors

Corporate Donations

Humanitarian Organizations

Individual Contributors
David Bitner
Maria D’Albert
Chad Heuschober
Mark Prutsalis
Louiqa Raschid
Martin Thomsen

In-Kind Donations
The Sahana Software Foundation received significant in-kind contributions in 2011,
which included donations of meeting space for our Annual Meeting and SahanaCamps
(IBM and ISCRAM), printed materials and refreshments at these events (AidIQ and IT
Crisis Services), the time to organize and deliver our SahanaCamp training program
(AidIQ), the hosting of our website and wiki by the Oregon State University Open Source
Labs, accounting and tax preparation services by Zuehls, Legaspi and Company, and
legal advice from Aaron Rubin, from the law firm Morrison & Foerster LLP. These direct
and significant contributions make the continuing operations of the Sahana Software
Foundation possible.


Financial Report
2011 Income & Expense Report

2011 Income

Income Amount
Direct Public Support
Corporate and Business Contributions
Google Inc $9,500.00
AidIQ $2,479.34
Total Corporate and Business Contributions $11,979.34
Total Individual Contributions $5,765.78
Publication Royalties
Lulu Press (Eden Essential Guide) $9.59
Publication Royalties $9.59
Total Direct Public Support $17,754.71
Contracts
World Food Programme $5,016.37
Total Contracts $5,016.37
In-Kind Donations
IBM (Meeting Space, Annual Meeting) $2,539.00
AidIQ (Time & Materials, SahanaCamps) $2,173.61
IT Crisis Services (Materials & Food, SahanaCamp LA) $1,464.79
ISCRAM (Meeting Space, Annual Meeting) $608.00
Total In-Kind Donations $6,785.40
Total Income $29,556.48


2011 Expenses

Expense Amount
Business Expenses
Bank Fees
Chase $600.00
Paypal $39.24
Total Bank Fees $639.24
Business Registration Fees
Secretary of State $20.00
Total Business Registration Fees $20.00
Total Business Expenses $659.24
Contract Services
Howling Zoe Productions (website) $1,125.00
Total Contract Services $1,125.00
Operations
Hosting
Open Incident (GoDaddy) $554.69
Total Hosting $554.69
Total Operations $554.69
Events
Travel & Meetings
Annual Meeting $11,496.18
Relief 11-02 $3,331.58
SahanaCamp LA $990.32
HFOSS Symposium $793.76
Tech@State $298.00
GSOC Doc & Mentor Summit $72.78
Total Travel & Meetings $16,982.62
Promotional Materials
T-shirts, stickers, hats $1,066.46
Total Promotional Materials $1,066.46
Total Events $18,049.08
World Food Programme Project
Hosting
Slicehost $2,112.82
Contract Services
Praneeth Bodduluri $1,500.00
Mark Prutsalis $700.00
Total World Food Programme Project $4,312.82
In-Kind Donations
Event - Annual Meeting
IBM Lisbon meeting space $2,539.00
ISCRAM meeting space $608.00
AidIQ printing costs $373.61
SahanaCamp LA Program
AidIQ time $1,800.00
IT Crisis Services materials and food $1,464.79
Total In-Kind Donations $6,785.40
Total Expense $31,486.23

Net Income -$1,929.75


Strategic Vision for 2012 and Beyond from
Sahana Software Foundation President Mark Prutsalis
2011 was a great year for the Sahana Software Foundation.
Sahana software has crossed a threshold between where it
was a proof of concept – demonstrating a better way to
manage information during disasters – into an accepted and
valued part of the response toolkit of professional relief
organizations.

Sahana software was used during the response to such
globally diverse disasters as the Tohoku earthquake and
tsunami in Japan, Hurricane Irene in New York City and floods
in Colombia. 2011 also saw Sahana Software’s formal Mark
Prutsalis

adoption by the International Federation of the Red Cross in President

the Asia Pacific Region, the City of Los Angeles Emergency

Management Department, and the Portuguese National
Voluntary Firefighting Association – the Bombeiros – in Portugal.

Our global volunteer community continued to grow in 2011 in both numbers and
diversity. We welcomed 12 new Members in 2011 and early 2012, half of them women.
I am extremely grateful for all that they do to support the mission and activities of the
Sahana Software Foundation.

Many challenges remain. The number and scale of disasters is projected to significantly
increase in the coming years, and affected communities will struggle to find the
resources to respond and recover while global economic austerity measures will
challenge everyone searching for support for resilience and mitigation programs.

Disaster Trends and Opportunities
Disasters have a devastating political, economic, social, and human impact on individuals
and societies. As the trends of population growth and urbanization converge, the scale
and impact of disasters will continue to grow.

The research is startling. When one looks at world population growth and particularly
the areas where urban population growth is occurring, one will find that this growth is
occurring in areas particularly vulnerable to disasters – areas prone to earthquakes and
coastal flooding, even without assuming the potential impact of climate change.
According to a recent UN and World Bank report, spending on disasters will triple to an
estimated $185 billion per year by 2100. Major earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand,
floods in Thailand and Australia, and tornadoes in the United States, made 2011 the
costliest year ever for natural disasters. Recovery from major disasters such as these
takes years, long after media attention has waned, public donations to charitable
organizations have dried up, and information is no longer easily shared between those
organizations with data, and those who need it.

Disaster management is, unfortunately, a growth industry. And with that comes both an
opportunity and a responsibility to do something to mitigate the risk and impacts of
disasters when they do occur.


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)
- United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects, 2007
• World’s population and economic centers are concentrated in “vulnerable
cities near earthquake faults, on river deltas or along tropical coasts.”
- the Economist, January 14, 2012

• 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.
- United Nations & World Bank, Natural Hazards, UnNatural Disasters, 2010
§ 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%.
- OECD, Ranking Port Cities with High Exposure and Vulnerability to Climate, 2007

• Global annual disaster spending will triple to $185 billion by 2100
- United Nations & World Bank, Natural Hazards, UnNatural Disasters, 2010
§ Spending on urban infrastructure to approach $350 trillion over next 30
years.
- Booz & Co., Reinventing the City to Combat Climate Change, 2010
§ 2011 was costliest year ever for disasters (earthquakes in Japan &
Zealand, flooding in China, Australia & Thailand, tornadoes in US).
§ Five of ten costliest disasters have occurred in last five years.
§ 20% of aid is now spent responding to disasters; only 0.7% on mitigation.
§ President Obama declared record 99 disaster declarations in 2011.
- the Economist, January 14, 2012

the Economist, January 14, 2012


In early 2012, we received our 501(c)(3) certification from the US Internal Revenue
Service as a non-profit organization. I feel strongly that the Sahana Software
Foundation, as a global charity and purveyor of humanitarian free and open source
software, can be an effective and significant part of the solution to the challenges
ahead of us.

Promoting Best Practices
A new information environment has come about as a result of responses to major
disasters like the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in
Japan. When the capacities of government and emergency services to respond to a
disaster are exceeded and crippled, decision-makings are forced to turn to external and
non-traditional sources of information in order to make life-saving decisions. New
technologies have given the public tools to be reliable and trusted sources of
information. Value has been found through the experiences of the Haiti and Japan
earthquakes in such publicly generated information through tools capable of leveraging
“crowdsourcing” and social media to identify the actionable information amidst a
background of clutter. Sahana software is one such tool, but it also provides so much
more in terms of capabilities to both emergency and disaster managers and the
communities affected by disasters.

We must be concerned with understanding and promoting best practices in leveraging
these new technologies. How do you understand in 140 characters how much
importance to place on a message. The challenge is to not only make sense of this
efficiently, but also how to appropriately integrate publicly available information with
other trusted sources and systems.

Another best practice is building information systems based on open, published and
widely used data standards, which makes critical systems easier to recover and rebuild.
Two years after the earthquake in Haiti, there is still no national registry of hospitals
and health facilities that includes capacities and services offered — critical information to
planning the recovery of the public health infrastructure. The Sahana Software
Foundation proposed in 2010 to build an open data repository using Sahana Eden and
based on a published data standard designed to address this very issue – the Emergency
Data Exchange Language - Hospital Availability Exchange standard (EDXL-HAVE) and
promoted the use of this standard with other solutions providers. Unfortunately, the
original Ministry of Health records were transitioned to a proprietary system that was
not sustainable, and succeeding efforts have not committed to an open standard flexible
enough to allow support for growth in the system by multiple agencies.

We must continue to support the design of systems (both our own and others) through
the work of our Standards and Interoperability project, that can easily share data using
published open data standards, the type that come from organizations like OASIS, OGC,
W3C, ISO, the ITU, and HL7. I want the Sahana Software Foundation to join OASIS as a
member in 2012 so we can fully participate in the working technical committees that
that write and maintain standards like EDXL and the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP).

I’m also proud that the Sahana Software Foundation is part of a Missing Persons
Community of Interest, along with Google, Facebook, the American Red Cross, ICRC,
Crisis Commons, Refugees United, and others that has come together and agreed to


build interoperability into our missing and found persons systems. After Hurricane
Katrina in 2005, over 50 websites popped up, most hosted by well-meaning media
organizations, to provide a public bulletin board for people to report themselves found or
to post notes on missing or separated family members. None of these sites talked to
each other; they did not collect information in a common or standard format. We must
not return to those days. We can do better. That is, in part, why the Sahana Software
Foundation was founded and why we continue to work hard to advocate for the
adoption of open standards and best practices.

Building Strong Partnerships
The fact that more and more professional emergency management agencies and other
humanitarian organizations are using Sahana software to help manage their own
operations is an important measure of the impact of the Sahana Software Foundation.
This list now includes the US National Library of Medicine, the International Federation
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the City of New York Office of
Emergency Management, the City of Los Angeles Emergency Management Department,
the American Red Cross, CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) Chicago, the
Bethesda Hospitals Emergency Preparedness Partnership, Academia Sinica (Taiwan), the
Sri Lanka National Disaster Relief Services Center, the Philippine Red Cross, the
Portuguese National Association of Volunteer Firefighters (Bombeiros), the Helios
Foundation, the Asia Disaster Preparedness Center, and LirneAsia.

We must continue to develop features in Sahana software according to user demand
from these and other stakeholders in our products. This is where the strength of
functionality and features in Sahana software has come from – real organizational
needs. Sahana has always been a balanced partnership between software developers
and emergency managers and that has made us unique, and uniquely effective.

Other partnerships are equally critical for SSF to maintain and expand, including the
good relationships we have with other open source organizations and technology
companies like Google, IBM, AidIQ, Oregon State University Open Source Labs and others.
These are not only essential for our own success and health as an organization, but also
to enable us to fulfill our mission towards helping governments, humanitarian
organizations, communities and people who are vulnerable to the impact of disasters.
Our mission is to help others, and we do not do this alone.

The Sahana Software Foundation has been incredibly successful since its inception with
minimal operating funds due to the hard work and dedication of dozens of highly skilled
and committed volunteers. The demands and expectations on us all are greater now, as
are the stakes. With donor funding, we hope to expand our capabilities, including
staffing, to be able to ensure proper maintenance and support for our codebases,
provide training, and continue to further the cause of interoperability.

Go forth and do good!


SSF 2011 Annual Report

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

Más de Sahana Software Foundation

Más de Sahana Software Foundation (20)

Último

Último (20)

SSF 2011 Annual Report