Mount Merapi

Mount Merapi is an active volcano near the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta. This photo was taken from the balcony of a hotel downtown, during the TALE 2019 conference. In 2006 I arranged for the Australian Computer Society to fund Indonesia students to work on adapting the Sahana open source disaster management software if needed for an expected eruption of Merapi. Fortunately this did not happen.

Transformation of US Emergency Management

Greetings from a meeting organized by the University of Sydney's "Interoperability for Extreme Events Research Group" (IEERG) where Bob Jensen from Strat3 LLC is speaking on how the transformation of US emergency management after Hurricane Katrina. He pointed out there was little comment after Hurricane Sandy because of the lessons learned from Katrina. The main thrust of this appears to be that the US Government took a more proactive role in preparing for disasters and coordinating state and local resources, rather than just responding afterwards. Bob pointed out this was not just a matter for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

One non-government response to Hurricane Katrina was the establishment of the Sahana Software Foundation in California. Sahana is free open source disaster management software developed in Sri Lanka for the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. This was then offered world wide for free use in other disasters. Hurricane Katrina showed that software which could be run on the computers in local shelters (typically local schools) would be useful. In response the Foundation was set up to better work with US agencies (I am a member of the foundation).

Bob mentioned the importance of disaster management personnel having current training. This is an issue in Australia,  as the Australian Government announced in 2014 that its Mount Macedon emergency management training campus would close by mid-2015, to save money and be replaced by a Canberra based virtual "Australian Emergency Management Institute". On 12 August 2015, Michael Keenan, Federal Minister for Justice, announced that a "New partnership to deliver emergency management professional development", indicating that the new virtual institute was not in operation and not delivering training. The institute says "accredited training opportunities will be available in late 2015". Given that Australia is on a heightened state of terrorist alert and has recently suffered fatalities from brushfires it is of concern that the Australian government does not have in place emergency management training. The financial cost, let along the human cost of this cost cutting could be considerable.

Australia is fortunate in having formal national qualification standards in emergency management, including:

1. PUA60112: Advanced Diploma of Public Safety (Emergency Management)
2. PUA52312: Diploma of Public Safety (Emergency Management)
3. PUA42712: Certificate IV in Public Safety (Emergency Communications Centre Operations)
4. PUA33012: Certificate III in Public Safety (Emergency Communications Centre Operations)

The highest of these qualifications, the Advanced Diploma of Public Safety (Emergency Management), is offered by ten Registered Training Organizations. One of these is the Attorney-Generals Department Trading as: Australian Emergency Management Institute, AEMI. However, from discussions at the IEERG meeting it appears that the Attorney-Generals Department will no longer be delivering courses and will be instead working with RTOs.

Open Source Software for Disaster Management in Sydney

Michael Howden, CEO of the Sahana Software Foundation will speak on "Open Source Software for Disaster Management" at the University of Sydney, 2pm, 24th February 2015.

The Interoperability for Extreme Events Research Group [IEERG] is hosting a presentation by Michael Howden, CEO, Sahana Software Foundation, who is visiting Sydney.

Date: Tuesday 24th February
Time:  2.00pm
Venue: University of Sydney CBD Campus, Level 17, 133 Castlereagh Street, Sydney.

Coffee and tea will be served from 1:30pm and again after the presentation.

If you would like to attend (and if you know of someone else who would like to attend) please RSVP to Christian Ehnis by Friday 20th Feb, 2015.

The Sahana Software Foundation has developed the Sahana Open Source Disaster Management Platform and deployed it around the world to assist organisations and emergency services to record, coordinate and share their disaster management information.

It was first developed during the 2004 tsunami and since then has been deployed as a Resource Management System by the International Red Cross, for tracking relief goods in the Philippines, a Community Resilience Mapping Tool in Los Angeles and a Maritime Common Operating Platform in Puget Sound.

Michael will be discussing these deployments and how Sahana has become a leading internationally recognised platform for disaster management and extreme events. He will also talk about the Sahana Software Foundation, which relies mostly on corporate sponsorships and volunteers internationally and how interested people can become engaged.

This presentation will be of interest to those involved in disaster research, software development, open source solutions, geo-science, social media, or the management of disasters and extreme events.

Michael Howden (Sahana Director, President & CEO): Michael has worked on delivering Sahana solutions to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in the Asia Pacific Region (the Resource Management System), the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (DRR Projects Portal), the City of Los Angeles (Give2LA), the Helios Foundation (HelioShare) and other organizations.  He trained as a software engineer from New Zealand and has worked  with humanitarian organizations throughout the world since 2005.  He has served as a member of the Sahana Eden Project Management Committee and the Sahana Community Development Committee for several years, and leads our facilitation team for our SahanaCamp program. Prior to becoming CEO of the Sahana Software Foundation, Michael was the Managing Director of AidIQ, a social enterprise that provides intelligent business solutions to the humanitarian and development community with the Sahana platform.  Michael has also served as the Sahana Eden coordinator for the Sahana Google Summer of Code Progam (2010-11) and as SSF Coordinator of the Sahana Google Code-In Program (2010/11 & 2011/12).

Hacked for Humanity in Sydney This Weekend

Greeting from the Commonwealth Bank headquarters at Darling Harbor in Sydney, where Random Hacks of Kindness Sydney (RHoK) has been holding their RHoK November Hackathon. Four teams have been working on four projects with a social purpose. This afternoon presented their results. In order of presentation:

First Stop are building a system for registering survivors after a disaster, so they do not need providing the same details to every agency. This is intended to not add to an already stressful situation and allow more time for helping the survivors. Already First Stop had a barcode printing application using vcard, from a previous RHOK (used for participants at this RHoK). This weekend the team added the capability of adding extra data fields to suit different agencies.


OCIUS: Are providing a website for analysis of data from a   BlueBottle USV . This is a uncrewed solar and wind powered vessel which collects oceanographic data. The problem is explaining to potential users and the general public what the USV can provide and how it can be used. The team looked at needs of the media, environmental groups and researchers. The aim is to demonstrate the system sailing autonomously around Lord Howe Island, transmitting data via SkyWave . I suggested activities for children be built into the website, such as where they carry out calculations from the data and identify and count animals seen by the on-board camera. This reminds me of the Australian developed Aerosonde Robotic Aircraft. which was the first to cross the North Atlantic Ocean (3,200 kilometres in 26 hours). While the system is intended for environmental monitoring, it also has obvious military applications. The Australian shipbuilding industry could do with a boost, having come in for criticism from the Minister for Defence, who said he did not trust the government owned shipbuilder"build a canoe".

First Robotics: This is an Australian offshoot of the US First STEM Project, to interest children in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). First Robotics provide activities for Australian school children using robots (including Lego robot kits). The RHoK exercise this weekend was to look at how to market the activities to parents and teachers. The team produced style guides, wire-frames and surveys for the website.

Benjam: Is a project for the " Woodbury Autism Education and Research" to build an App which al lows children with autism to communicate with their carers. This would use off-the-shelf networked mobile devices and have a user expandable vocabulary. An example given was a new type of biscuit . The team presented a series of use case diagrams, showing the user journey. The concept is that the device would respond to gestures , such as nodding and pointing. While there has been considerable Human Computer Interface (HCI) research on gesture interfaces and some real products (mostly games) these are too compl ex for this use. Suc h an interface might be of use for adults where their attention is limited, such as when driving . Also Australia has an Autism Cooperative Research Centre, which may find this project of interest.

I was one of the three judges and we were unanimous in awarding Benjam a trophy , but all the projects were good.

Venue

The Commonwealth Bank building  in Sydney provided an excellent venue. RHoK u sed a meeting room with a n outdoor area with views o ver Darling Harbor . The building has an atrium letting light down into all levels of the building and an open plan layou t, with no walls at all onto the atrium.

ps: From 19 January 2015 teaching a "New Technology Alignment" (NTA) on-line course at the ACS Virtual College (register now ).

Hacking for Humanity in Sydney This Weekend

Greeting from the Commonwealth Bank headquarters at Darling Harbor in Sydney, where Random Hacks of Kindness Sydney (RHoK) is holding their RHoK November Hackathon. About thirty people have volunteered their time to work on computer applications with a social purpose. The weekend starts with presentations by those with an idea, or problem, teams then select an application to work on work on. On Sunday afternoon the teams present what they have produced. There is a trophy for the best implementation, but as the organizers emphasize, this is about participating, not winning. I am one of the judges and this should be good experience for when I am teaching New Technology Alignment in January.

One of the problems t work on is analysis of data from the BlueBottle USV. This is a uncrewed solar and wind powered vessel which collects oceanographic data. The problem is the analysis of the large amounts of data the drones collect. 

A second problem owner is "Woodbury Autism Education and Research".  They would like an App which allows children with autism to communicate with their carers.

International Disaster Risk Reduction Day

Greetings from the International Disaster Risk Reduction Day Forum at the Australian National University in Canberra. The event is sponsored by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC and there are four speakers today, from Attorney General's Department, Red Cross, and two from the ANU.

Speakers:

• Andrew Coghlan - Australian Red Cross, National Manager, Emergency Services.
• Dr Helen James - ANU - specialist in Asian disasters, governance and sustainable development.
• Professor Stephen Dovers - ANU - Director of the Fenner School of Environment and Society.
• Samantha Chard - Attorney-General's Department - Assistant Secretary Emergency Management Policy

Most interesting was Dr Helen James discussion of how disasters effect the young, old and females more.

ps: It is an appropriate time to consider if the Australian Government has the correct priorities for protecting the Australian community. The Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa poses a far higher and more intimidate threat to the Australian community than does ISIL in the Middle East. However, the Australian Government is not contributing any of its emergency medical and logistical facilities to the African emergency.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop has stated that Australia does not have the ability to evacuate health workers back to Australia from West Africa as a reason to send no support. However, Australian personnel take part in international operations in cooperation with other countries with mutual support. There is no reason this would not apply in Africa, As it has done in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Last year in Colombo I took part in an event to discuss how the Sahana Software Foundation could enhance the disaster management software it provides free so it can be used to combat a pandemic.

Research on the Sahana Disaster Management System

Next week I am giving a presentation about the Free Open Source Sahana Disaster Management System. For this I will use one of the preprepared slide packs from the Sahana Foundation, plus some of my own material rested to university students and computer conferences. However, as this is for an academic audience, I thought I should also see if there is research literature which mentions Sahana.

I found 682 papers with the words: sahana disaster management. The number increases in a linear fashion from 5 in 2005 to 117 for 2013:

Number of Publications Per Year Mentioning Sahana

Year	Publications
2005	5
2006	17
2007	37
2008	54
2009	53
2010	83
2011	97
2012	105
2013	117

Then I narrowed the search to the year 2014, which produced a more manageable 65 papers.
As this is about open source software, I thought I should just look at open access publications (which do not need a fee to be paid to read), which reduces the number to about 20, but still too many to read. Here are the first few:

The Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience Project used the Sahana Community Resilience Mapping Tool (Eisenman et al., 2014). Drager and Robertson also mentioned Sahana in the context of risk reduction (2014). Liu, Chen and Wang describe the enhancement of Sahana with an ontology (2014). Li, Li, Ginjala and Zaman (2014) mention Sahana and Ushahidi, before discussing SMS, as do Reuter et al. (2014). Waidyanatha (2014) describes the development of Sahana workshops to implement the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) to provide standardised emergency warnings via SMS. IOTX Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Workshops. Horita, Link, Porto de Albuquerque and Hellingrath (2014) propose a way to integrate geographic information into the Sahana and Ushahidi GIS and logistics systems. Poblet, García-Cuesta and  Casanovas  (2014) look at the use of crowd-sourcing for providing information in a disaster.

Sahana appears to be mentioned frequently alongside  Ushahidi as an example of free open source emergency management software. Researchers also find it a useful context for discussing ideas for emergency software development, in terms of ontologies, social media and interfaces. What is less common are papers on use of the software or its development or enhancement.

References

1. Drager, K. H., & Robertson, T. V. (2014). Global Response for Capacity Building of Disaster Preparedness: A TIEMS Initiative.
2. Eisenman, D., Chandra, A., Fogleman, S., Magana, A., Hendricks, A., Wells, K., ... & Plough, A. (2014). The Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience Project—A Community-Level, Public Health Initiative to Build Community Disaster Resilience. International journal of environmental research and public health, 11(8), 8475-8490.
3. Horita, F., Link, D., Porto de Albuquerque, J., & Hellingrath, B. (2014). A Framework for the Integration of Volunteered Geographic Information into Humanitarian Logistics .
4. Li, J., Li, Q., Ginjala, A., & Zaman, N. (2014). eSMS-a Semantics-assisted Emergency Information System Based on Social Media.
5. Liu, Y., Chen, S., & Wang, Y. (2014). SOFERS: Scenario Ontology for Emergency Response System. Journal of Networks, 9(9), 2529-2535.
6. Poblet, M., García-Cuesta, E., & Casanovas, P. (2014, January). IT Enabled Crowds: Leveraging the Geomobile Revolution for Disaster Management. In Sintelnet WG5 Workshop on Crowd Intelligence: Foundations, Methods and Practices.
7. Reuter, C., Friberg, T., Moi, M., Bizjak, G., Nuessler, D., Sangiorgio, F., ... & Gizikis, A. (2014). Guidelines for Social Media integration into existing EMS systems. In     EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT IN SOCIAL MEDIA GENERATION.
8. Waidyanatha, N. (2014). IOTX Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Workshops. Planet@ Risk, 2(5).

Random Hacks of Kindness Sydney Judging

Greetings from  Random Hacks of Kindness Global Hackathon in Sydney. Three teams having been working on community computer applications (RHoK Sydney problems) for the last two days. Myself and two other judges will be looking at the team presentations shortly, then scoring using the standard RHoK Judging Criteria: 

1. creativity / innovative / unique
2. utility, can it be used in the field?
3. applicable, does it solve a problem
4. impact, local or global
5. progress (on existing work, or starting from nothing)
6. usability

The first team is developing a system to help with donations for the Bagong Barrio Education Fund. (BBEF). The Bagong Barrio Education Fund is a not-for-profit program for education of children in the village of Bagong Barrio, Manila, in the Philippines.

The second team was Zspaces  who aim to match up people who have empty office, retail or warehouse space with those having a short term need. This is conceptually similar to Renew Newcastle, which makes use of vacant shop-fronts for artists to sell their works.  An example of a use of space in Sydney is the Leichhardt Pop In Space. But Zspaces would allow for much more short term use of just a few days. This could be popular with councils who don't like to see empty shops in their streets.

The third team is adding extra features to Open Development Cambodia (ODC), to help about Cambodia's economic and social development. They interface to a MySQL database, to extract and visualize data about Cambodia.

The range of applications and approaches were very interesting.

Humanitarian Computing Completion in Sydney

Greetings from  Random Hacks of Kindness Global Hackathon at the offices of Ninefold in Sydney. This is an application development competition, where teams hear about a problem effecting a community group and then develop an application to help. At the moment Inês Almeida is giving a presentation on her work presenting a positive image for girls via social media. I have volunteered to be one of the judges for RHoK, given my past work on free open source disaster management.

Inês suggested that the typical startup process used with for-profit ventures does not suit social enterprises. Small ventures could use crowd funding, but need to keep coming up with new attention getting ("disruptive") ideas. But she cautioned about using some of the less ethical tactics of commercial ventures.

It is a cool sunny day and Ninefold's office has a panoramic view of Darling Harbor and the Blue Mountains.

Fund for Humanitirian Software to Support Disaster Response

The Sahana Software Foundation has launched a Philippines Appeal. The foundation provides free open source disaster response software and training.   The software is used by government and non-government organizations around the world to coordinate relief operations after natural disasters. The software is in use by the Philippine Department of Social Welfare and Development and the Philippines Red Cross for Typhoon Haiyan recovery operations.

The Sahana Software Foundation is non-profit organization registered in the State of California, USA. In 2010 it received the PPBI Best Practices Award for its work on Haiti Earthquake and in 2013 was named Computerworld Honors Laureate for information technology to benefit society.

Typhoon Haiyan International Relief Operations Underway

Reports on the effect of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) have been slow to arrive due to the severity of the event. Reports through my colleagues at the Sahana Foundation and the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) are indicating the severity of the situation in the Philippines:

Many government staff and emergency workers are themselves causalities. Debris block roads, electricity supply is limited, as is fuel, vehicle tires, food, clean drinking water. Maintenance of law and order is also an issue.

In 2011 landing ship HMAS Choules (former RFA Largs Bay) was commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy. Choules has a flight deck for heavy Chinook helicopters and two 2 Mexeflote powered rafts to transfer cargo to shore. Choules also has a diesel/electric propulsion system, which may also be of use for supplying on-shore power.

There were early problems with Choules, but these have been overcome an it performed well in recent military exercises. The Australian government should now make urgent preparations, should Choules be required for Typhoon Haiyan relief operations.

Unfortunately the more capable Landing Helicopter Dock ship HMAS Canberra,  is not due to be commissioned until 2014.^. 

Ten Years of Post-Tsunami Recovery in Sri Lanka

A call for papers has been issued for the 2nd Asian Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management on the topic "10 Years of Post-Tsunami Recovery: the role of ICTs in building disaster resilience". The conference ISCRAM-Asia 2014, will be Colombo,  to be held in Sri Lanka, 20-21 June 2014.

2nd Asian Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management

Call for Papers

CONFERENCE THEME: 10 years of post-tsunami recovery: the role of ICTs in building disaster resilience 

ISCRAM-ASIA 2014: 2nd Asia-Continental Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management 

CONFERENCE DATES: Friday 20th & Saturday 21st June 2014 LOCATION: Colombo, Sri Lanka.

 THEMES

1. RESPONSE
1.1    Coordination, Search and rescue / First Aid
1.2    Humanitarian and Disaster relief supply chain management
1.3    Emergency management information systems (Information Systems supporting Situational Awareness, disaster relief supply chain management)
2. REHABILITATION AND RECONSTRUCTION
2.1    Humanitarian challenges
2.2    Reconstruction, long term recovery and ecosystem reconstruction
2.3    Resettlement (land use planning/reasoning)
2.4    Monitoring long-term progress in disaster risk reduction
3. CROSS CUTTING ISSUES
3.1    ICTs for Disaster Risk Management
3.2    Decision support systems
3.3    Risk communication, dissemination and comprehension
3.4    Development and operationalization of response control systems
3.5    Intelligent systems
3.6    Use of ICTs in public health and emergency medical management
3.7    Role of social media in risk perception, awareness, knowledge management, and crisis response
3.8    Mobile technology for real-time emergency response
4. PREPAREDNESS
4.1    The role of cultural and gender dimensions in disaster vulnerability, response, and recovery
4.2    Innovative Multi-stakeholder Community-focused Partnerships in DRR and EWS
4.3    Functional Early Warning Systems
4.4    Disaster Risk Assessment
4.5    Emergency drills and simulations
5. PREVENTION AND MITIGATION
5.1    Risk communication, dissemination and comprehension
5.2    Disaster risk insurance, management and planning
5.3    Development and operationalization of response control systems
5.4    Disaster awareness education training (or disaster education and learning)
5.5    Progress in developing early warning systems
5.6    Climate Change Adaptation

CONTRIBUTIONS

ISCRAM-ASIA 2014 invites two categories of papers. All paper submissions must be relevant to ISCRAM, make a new and significant contribution to the body of knowledge on information systems for emergency management, support their contribution with valid arguments, and be clearly structured and well written.

• Research papers presenting valid, original, relevant cutting edge research that will be reviewed to the highest academic standards. Reviewing will pay additional attention to the application of the related scientific literature and theory, to the use of an appropriate research methodology, and to technical, mathematical and statistical correctness. This will be complemented by a review from a member of the Scientific Committee (SC).
• Insights from the Practice of Emergency Management papers presenting new developments in emergency management and policy making, discussing approaches, methods, tools, (best) practices and standards. These papers should focus on practical issues and concerns and raise challenges for future research, and will be reviewed to the highest practice-oriented standards.According to the completeness of work, authors can choose to submit their work as

• Full papers presenting completed work. Such papers should be no more than 10pages including figures & tables (~5000 words).
• Short papers presenting work in progress and novel approaches that are beingdeveloped. Such papers should be no more than 4 pages with figures & tables (~2000 words).

Posters

• Posters presenting work in progress, novel approaches being developed or completed work must first outline the content of the poster through a 1 page abstract (~250 words), then followed by an image of the actual poster.
• Panel discussions presenting work in progress, novel approaches being developed or completed work must first outline the title, theme, context, and panelists credentials in a short-paper no more than 4 pages with figures & tables (~2000 words)For each type of paper, submissions are welcome from academics, researchers, practitioners, technical or other experts, policy makers, or other professionals in the emergency management domain. The proceedings will identify the type of submission and reviewing process chosen.Other forms of contributions: Separate calls are or will be made for workshops, panels, posters, demonstrations, and the doctoral consortium. All calls will be published on iscram2014.org.

TO SUBMIT A PAPER:

1. Authors must submit papers electronically through the conference system. The link to the submission system will be available on the website in November.)
2. All papers must use the ISCRAM paper template and follow the ISCRAM house style. The template will be available through the conference system and on the conference submissions page

Important Dates

Announce call for full-paper abstracts	20 October 2013
Deadline for submission of full-paper abstracts	24 November 2013
Review abstract and invite submission of full-papers	15 December 2013
Deadline for submission of full papers	09 March 2014
Deadline for panel proposals	09 March 2014
Deadline for short-paper submissions (work-in- progress & concept papers, poster proposals)	09 March 2014
Complete review of full-papers, short-papers, and	13 April 2014

panel proposals
FINAL submission of camera-ready full-papers, short- papers, and panel proposals	18 May 2014
FINAL decision made by the Program and Scientific Committee	01 June 2014

...

Sahana Software Foundation Internships

The Sahana Software Foundation, which I am a member of, is a not-for-profit organization supporting open source disaster management software used by the Red Cross, United Nations and other organizations around the world. Sahana is running software development virtual internships from November 2013 to March 2014 for work on UI/UX design. These are available world wide.

Disasters Conference in Canberra 18 September

The Australian National University will be hosting an international conference on "The Demography of Disasters: Implications for future policy on development and resilience", in Canberra, 18 - 20 September 2013.

As natural disasters impact inequitably on vulnerable populations around the world, disaster preparedness, recovery and reconstruction is increasingly being approached through the lens of integrated public policies on development, demographics, and disaster risk reduction. How the cross-cultural context influences disaster risk governance, and how new communities and families arise from the destruction will form the core dialogue for the papers from renowned international experts being presented at this conference.
Conference aims

Speakers

Major speakers will include:

• Professor Elizabeth Frankenberg, Duke University, North Carolina
• Professor Susan Cutter, University of South Carolina
• Professor Mark Pelling, King's College, London
• Professor Douglas Paton, University of Tasmania
• Professor Josifina Natividad, University of The Philippines
• Professor Yang Chenggang, Population Research Institute, Chengdu, China
• Professor Ken Miichi, Iwate Prefectural University, Japan.

Program, abstracts & biographies

Program (PDF 680KB)
Abstracts of papers (PDF 195KB)
Speaker biographies (PDF 52KB)

Registration

» Register now online

 

Free eBook on Disaster Management with Open Source Software

My colleagues at the Sahana Foundation have released "Sahana Eden: Essential Guide", a  free ebook about how to use the Sahana free open source disaster management software. The software was first developed for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and subsequently around the world for disaster relief operations. A Resource Mapping System was contributed to Sahana Eden by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and is available for other organizations to use. The book is available as web pages by chapter, one web page, ePub, and PDF (104 pages).

Table of Contents

Introduction

• About this Book
• Why Sahana Eden?
• What Does Sahana Eden Do?
• Who Uses Sahana Eden?
• Technical Overview
• Planning a Deployment

Getting Started

• Installation
• Configuration
• Importing Data
• Localization

Administration

• Maintenance
• Data Export

Extending Sahana Eden

• Installing a Developer Environment
• Customization
• Building a New Module
• Further Reading

Meeting The Sahana Community

• Sahana Software Foundation
• Getting Support
• Getting Involved
• Contributing Code
• Where to Go Next

• Appendices

• Resource Model
• Mapping & GIS
• Scheduler
• Synchronization
• Web Services
• S3XML
• Glossary
• Credits

Volinteer Humanitarian Mapmakers

Hal Hodsen writes in New Scientist about volunteers producing their own on-line maps for developing nations ("Citizen cartographers fill the gaps in maps", (5 July 2013). This has been done in the past where a disaster has occurred, most prominently for the Haiti earthquake. But the New Scientist discusses mapping to improve conditions, rather than just after a disaster. In May I attended a meeting in Colombo to discuss how to help deal with pandemics, including the use of mapping.

Mobiles and e-learning for Pandemic Flu Response

Tom Worthington will be speaking on "Mobiles and e-learning for Pandemic Flu Response" to members of the Sahana Software Foundation, 5:30pm to 6:30pm, Tuesday, 7 May 2013 at the Virtusa Auditorium  (Orion City), 752 Dr Danister De Silva Mawatha, Colombo 09, Sri Lanka. See also:

• E-government for emergencies: dealing with a bird flu pandemic using the wireless web and podcasting
• MOOCs with Books

Role of Community Groups in Disaster Management

The Australian Council of Social Service has released the report "Adapting the Community Sector for Climate Extremes " by Karl Mallon, Emily Hamilton, Manu Black, Betsi Beem and Julius Abs of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF):

Given its size, scope and the critical role the Australian community sector plays in building client and community resilience and in assisting communities to respond to and recover from the devastating impacts of extreme weather events and natural disasters, the research identifies serious gaps in both the policy frameworks and the research base required to ensure the sector’s resilience and adaptive capacity – gaps which appear to have already had serious consequences. To address these gaps, a series of recommendations has been prepared to enable the development and implementation of a comprehensive, sector-specific adaptation and preparedness program, which includes mechanisms to institutionalise knowledge and skills, streamlined tools appropriate to the needs and capacity of a diverse range of organisations and a benchmarking system to allow progress towards resilience and preparedness to be monitored. Future research priorities for adaptation in this sector have also been identified.

Australia Disaster Management Platform

Work to develop an Australia Disaster Management Platform (ADMP) was announced 14 March 2013 by University of Melbourne, IBM, and NICTA. This is intended to bring together geo-spatial data to help with planning before, and management during, disasters.It is not clear if the system will be made freely available or restricted to paying customers. The Ushahidi visualization and interactive mapping system is already available as free open source software and has been used in disaster management. Also the free open source Sahana Eden disaster management software  has a Mapping module built in.  - Also it is not clear if ADMP will include provision for crowd sourcing data, or will be limited to official technical sources. Recent disasters have shown that the usual official sources of data are limited and in many cases incorrect, with "group truth" provided by the general public being more accurate and up to date.

Humanitarian Open Source Software Meeting at Linux Conference

Tim McNamara arranged a well attended meeting of those interested in humanitarian uses of open source software (and hardware) at Linux Conference 2013 in Canberra on Wednesday. The HFOSS BoF (Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Birds of a Feather) was held at the Purple Pickle Cafe on the Australian National University campus (just opposite the College of Engineering and Computer Science: CECS). Topics discussed included: CrisisCommons, mailing list, Random Hacks of Kindness (RHOK), Sahana Software Foundation, Ushahidi, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), OpenMRS, RapidSMS, and the Serval Project.

Tim suggested one way organizations could assist is to provide a venue for volunteers to work on projects, especially during a crisis. It occurred to me that perhaps more work needs to be done to address on-line disasters. As we become more dependent on the Internet and telecommunication and as these come under threat from cyber-attack, as well as natural disasters, some form of crisis response is needed. This would provide a surge capacity in a crisis, beyond the resources provided by organizations such as AusCert.