Version 2 of the Sahana open source disaster management system was released for testing last week. See my quick check of the user interface. This includes screen shots on a mobile phone and PDA and in several languages including Chinese.
Version 1 of Sahana was developed in a hurry for the Asian tsunami and is to be pressed into service for the Pakistan earthquake. Earlier in the year I suggested changing the web interface so it would be more efficient in the field, could run on hand held devices and the interface could be machine translated into other languages. Not everything has been implemented yet, but enough to show it is possible.
ps: In the middle of the redesign of Sahana, Hurricane Katrina struck the USA, with reports of problems with coordination efforts. We discussed if the third world needed to lend its technical expertise to the USA. But the experience of trying to help fix web based systems during the Canberra bush-fires, suggested there was little chance of the help being accepted.
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