Gav's Blog

Around the 13th of March, I started posting ideas on Facebook of what I’d like to see in the recovery in Christchurch. One of my posts was the following:

New Chch: Oh, and of course a world leading research centre for natural hazards, earthquake engineering and construction, resilient organisations and communities, risk management, business continuity, crisis management, emergency management and all forms of technology to support this. We have a fair amount of this here already, but let’s tightly integrate it into a more integrated cross-platform centre.

Justin Lewis then went on to suggest in my comments that we have a purpose built Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) and Rescue Operations Centre, as well as an Urban Search and Rescue training ground (I’ve been to VA-TF1′s training centre and equipment store in Virginia, US, back in 2002 and it was fantastic). I also added in the comments that the EOC should also be able to operate as an alternative or supporting National Crisis Management Centre – in particularly for when Wellington has their large earthquake. Jon Mitchell, the Regional CDEM Manager has also been promoting similar views.

Of course, the artificial limit of 420 charaters on Facebook points some real constraints on what you can say, so my plan was always to take the time to flesh it out in more detail when time allowed. Well, I’m now taking the time to do so.

Before the earthquakes of September 4, 2010, and February 22, 2011 – Christchurch was already well advanced when it comes to research into natural hazards, engineering, social science and emergency management – and this is one of the reasons why our response to February 22 has been generally highly regarded internationally. We also had a lot of capacity and capability in operational response – for a while we held the lion’s share of NZ Response Teams, as well as being hosts to one of the three Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces (NZ USAR TF2).

To give you a little background, here are some of the ‘centres’ and organisations that have been in place in Christchurch over the years.

• The Emergency Management Training Centre – this was originally the training arm of the Canterbury Regional Council, but has progressed into its own NZQA Private Training Establishment.
• The New Zealand Centre for Advanced Engineering – an engineering and technology think-tank that has done a lot of work around natural hazards, including Engineering Lifelines, Reviews, Natural Hazard Risk Management and Communication, and Public Alerting.
• The Natural Hazards Research Centre based at the University of Canterbury – research programmes related to studies of active tectonics and earthquakes, landscape evolution modelling, land-use planning, urban vulnerability to volcanic eruptions and health risks from eruptions.
• Earthquake Engineering at the University of Canterbury College of Engineering
• Resilient Organisations – represents a synthesis of engineering disciplines and business leadership aimed at transforming NZ organisations into those that both survive major events and thrive in the aftermath.
• NZ Registered USAR Response Teams – we also have 5 of New Zealand’s 18 Registered Response Teams.
• NZ USAR Search Dog Association – of which 9 of the 11 dogs and handlers are located in Christchurch and associated with USAR TF2 (the other two are based in Auckland).

So, Christchurch and Canterbury already have a significant in-region capability across many disciplines – including operational, strategic, policy and research.

We now have the potential to build a world class centre for emergency management and related disciplines that could bring many of these disparate activities together onto a single campus. What a shining light this could be as part of long term recovery from the earthquakes, than to build a nationally and internationally recognised centre.

What would be some of the key capabilities it should have:

• Concentrated – all the facilities should be on a single physical campus to ensure close proximity and collaboration, and integrated under a single administrative structure (if possible).
• EOC – a world class Emergency Operations Centre that supports not only local and regional response, but also can act as an alternate National EOC. This facility would also be a dedicated routine facility for emergency management for Christchurch and Canterbury.
• Internationally-recognised Training Centre – there should be an operationally-focused training centre as part of the facility, that integrates not only the EMTC, but also includes full facilities to undertake not only Urban Search and Rescue, but other specialist search disciplines such as Heights/Ropes and Search Dogs. Again, there are elements of this dotted around Christchurch, such as at the Woolston Fire Station where USAR TF2 is based, but again, this should be completely integrated into this campus, and the training facilities again need to be world class. The facility needs to be capable of supporting training and exercises up to, and including, the extremely challenging 72 hour USAR exercises for Category 2 USAR technicians and engineers.
• Strategy and Policy – thinking about the big pictures issues such as humanities increasing vulnerability to risk, and the strategic and policy decisions required, that have to be managed in terms far longer that three-year political spells.
• Integrated research – currently a lot of the research programmes are not fully integrated and the researchers work out of many different departments. This could be turned on its head and the new programme could ensure that all related disciplines are working in close proximity to not only each other, but also the practitioners.
• New disciplines – such a centre should also look at expanding research and operations into new areas that have not yet been included, and leveraging on Kiwi inginuity and design excellence. Kiwi’s could being a lot to the table in terms of development of technology and IT for risk and emergency management, an area I feel that Kiwi’s are not yet pulling their weight.
• International links – any such centre must not operate in isolation, and there are many relevant forms of partnerships that could be made, including the likes of the Emergency Management Division of the Justice Institute of British Colombia, FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute, and platforms such as the United Nations Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction and Integrated Research on Disaster Risk.

We’ve been handed some lemons – let’s make some lemonade and turn Christchurch into a world class centre for emergency management and related disciplines!

I received a handout of this from our friend and neighbouring psychologist at work, and thought I’d type it up and make it available online. This comes from the New Zealand College of Clinical Psychologists – the actual pdf and other resources are available here.

Routines – ‘Familiarity is comforting’
Keep up normal activities
Treasure familiar things

Stay connected – ‘We need each other’
Stay in touch with family and friends
Take moments to give others your full attention
Listen and answer children’s questions simply
Be brave for each other
Ask for and accept help

Save your energy – ’Keep it for important things’
Lower expectations of yourself and others
Take breaks and lighten your workloads
Be tolerant of yourself and others
Lots of things can wait
Children may act younger – that’s ok for a while

Lifestyle – ‘Balance is healthy’
Stay active e.g. go for a walk
Relax – take a break
Limit alcohol
Try to get enough sleep
Try to eat well
Do something nice for yourself

Safety – ‘Protect yourself in every way’
Limit exposure to earthquake news e.g. TV
You are not helpless – remember the things you do well
Take care of your spiritual and emotional health
It is ok to be emotional

For extra support contact your GP, or phone 0800 777 846, or go to http://www.canterburyearthquake.org.nz/.

New Zealand College of Clinical Psychologists

After checking the interior of the house and finding little damage, I actually retreated to my bed for the next hour or so and started replying to people that had been asking if I was OK, and trying to track down more information on the extent of the quake and damage. Power and water was of course out at this point, so I was limited to the very long battery life on my laptop and mobile broadband. Despite Vodafone 3G coverage being far from ideal at home, the speeds were still pretty good.

Next steps as it became light enough to see outside was to do a reccy around the outside of the house looking for external damage. Couldn’t see anything indicating damage and this was indeed a good thing.

Now it was about 0630 or so, and other than the utilities being out, everything was in pretty good order. The plan from here was to get prepped, go and check the office, and then another couple of properties of relatives/friends around Christchurch. Despite having a ready kit in the past with boots, overalls, helmet, gloves and other stuff – a mixture of using some of these items, and a fair amount of recent travel, meant they weren’t all in one place, so a little hunting was required to get them back into a bag. Water for the day was easily dealt with, as I have a wine rack at the front door, which in addition to holding wine, also stores a number of recycled plastic water bottles that are used for exercise, days-out, roadtrips, and of course, emergencies. These were chucked into the bag, along with some dark chocolate and some OneSquareMeal bars, and we were ready to go. Of course, as keen photographers, we also had cameras with plenty of batteries and cards.

The last thing that I did before leaving was to turn the water off at the street, and turn the power off at the mains switchboard. Just in case there had been damage to utilities within the house, or more damage was caused by a large aftershock when we weren’t there, then we would hopefully minimise the risk of a broken pipe and lots of water, or an electrical fire.

It didn’t take long to find notable damage to road and infrastructure, and only about 300-400 metres from the house I found the road cracked, the first signs of liquefaction (and yes, I knew about liquefaction before the earthquake) and broken pipes. After taking a few photos, and driving on, we struck more around Travis Wetlands by Timara Park – lots of cracking in the road and significant leans on some powerpoles. In addition, the liquefaction process had clearly raised the in-ground infrastructure, as the grates had noticeably raised up beyond the road surface, anywhere from 50 to 250mm.

At this point we decided to pretty much drive straight on to the office. On the way, we saw the first evidence of fallen chimneys, collapsed block fences, and on Cranford Street the first old unreinforced masonry buildings (URM) that had partially collapsed. Also drove past the Chinese Methodist Church on Papanui Road that had lost a fair bit of brickwork, and had fair-crushed a van.

Got to the office and it was in very good nick – nothing broken, but certainly evidence of the odd small item being thrown around. I grabbed the Networked Attached Storage (NAS) that acts as our fileserver and moved it to the car. Just in case. Sure, I had backups, but if needed to run from another location for a while, it is just easier to plug the NAS in.

From there it was onto a couple of other properties for a quick walk-around and checking the utilities and make sure everything was safe. Which they were.

The second place did have two brick chimneys, and both of these had fallen, and one had significantly damaged two cars – one of which was later written off. However, all the utilities were working, and we had power, phone, water, and Internet via wifi. So for the next couple of hours we camped out there getting more information about the quake as it came to hand, and starting making some phonecalls to colleagues to let them know we were OK, and to see what we could do to help respond.

Yep – it has taken a M7.1 earthquake for me to awaken my blog. I’ve been meaning to starting writing again for some time, but after having been through a bit the past week, I figured that now was a good time to upgrade the software, dust off the spam filter, and start writing again.

I’m probably going to have a pile to say over the coming weeks as I try to capture what I experienced and learnt. In the meantime, I want to start with the main quake, and my immediate response.

I want to preface this by saying, in case you haven’t taken the hints by some of the words in the tag cloud to the side, that I am an emergency management consultant by trade – I work in the profession that deals with disasters.

Pow, right between the eyes
Oh, how nature loves her little surprises
– Joe Walsh – A Life of Illusion

I recall being awoken by the timber in the walls creaking. I am somewhat of a heavy sleeper so I probably missed some of the early grumbles but I woke up fairly quickly. I knew it was a strongish one, as I’ve experienced a few (as we do in the Shakey Isles) including many in the 4-5.5 range, as well as the M6.7 Arthurs Pass earthquake in 1994. I didn’t immediately get in a door frame, but when my flatmate turned up in the doorway to my room I quickly went to the doorway in my closet, right about the time that the shaking seemed to be intensifying.

Unlike the 1994 earthquake, this one seemed to go on for a lot longer – or at least it certainly felt like it. I know at some point I heard glass shatter. And as quickly as it arrived, it passed.

Both my friend and I are emergency managers, so we knew that it was quite a strong one, especially with some of the car alarms going in the street. At that point I didn’t think that it was a Christchurch quake, instead either a large Wellington quake, or something from the Alpine Fault that is well overdue for a large rumble anyway.

The first quick check was the light switch, and as that didn’t result in any further illumination, I went and got the torch beside my bed and had light. The next check was the water which appeared to have lost pressure. Next was the Internet, and that of course was inaccessible due to the power failure. Luckily, I had a mobile broadband card, so stuck it in the laptop and jumped online. The iPhone also proved useful.

What happened next surprised me. Within 45 minutes I’d had email enquiries from multiple friends in the US and China. So quickly responded to them letting them know that I was OK, as well as getting a quick I’m OK message up. Around the same time, we wanted more information, and that is where my American Red Cross emergency radio came in soooooo handy. As it turned out, I hadn’t charged the rechargeable batteries for a long time and they were flat. I also hadn’t put real batteries in it. It did however have a kinetic hand crank, so I was able to give it a spin, and get a few minutes radio listening before having to crank it again. Needless to say, since the evening of the 4th, it has been plugged back into mains power to charge the rechargeables!

The radio was the first real view into the outside world and what was going on, and when I first heard reports on NewsTalkZB that it was felt in Dunedin, that it was when it became clear it was a fairly sizable quake. For some reason I wasn’t able to get National Radio early on – not sure if it was my radio, or if the transmitter had actually been knocked out for a bit. I did also jump on Twitter, but didn’t get too much information there that I wasn’t already getting from other sources.

Of course during this period there were a pile of largish aftershocks, and this constant activity also reinforced that it was a rather large quake, and possibly quite a bit closer. I was quite surprised when I heard that the epicentre was around Darfield. Sometime during this first hour, I also went to Geonet to have a look at the quake drums and one look at the chart instantly told me that it was very widely felt.

Naturally, the two of us also did a quick reccy around the inside of the house and apart from a few things being knocked over, the only actual damage was the glass in a mounted photo frame that smashed near the front door during the shake.

We were very very lucky compared to many others.

(this is the first in what is likely to be a number of posts on the earthquake)

This is a followup email that went out today to prompt new leadership of the Sahana PHP project.

In my long email nearly a week ago, I suggested that we dissolve the existing PMC. I would now like to start community discussion about forming a new PMC to provide the leadership that the PHP project requires, and has not received for a long time.

A brief reminder why I think the PMC should be dissolved
No, actually, it is the leadership of the PHP project’s fault, and as one of the members of the PMC, I have to shoulder some of that blame like many other people here. Fran et al raised many issues in 2008 about not only the core framework of Sahana PHP, but also infrastructure. He and others tried to work within the PHP project, BUT NOTHING EVER HAPPENED. He tried to work within the rules but the PHP PMC failed him completely. In the end, Fran et al did exactly the right thing to do with open source software and fork/recode. The PHP PMC never ever made any decisions to modernise or improve the core framework. We never responded to Fran’s issues, and now, nearly a whole year later, we still have not made much progress on project infrastructure. It is entirely the PHP PMC’s fault for showing a lack of leadership, and not getting things done. I am honestly at the point where I believe the current PHP PMC is dysfunctional, and I would like to see a brand new leadership team form by those that want to take the reigns of Sahana (PHP). The only thing that Fran et al did wrong was to use the Sahana brand without permission.
Likewise, there have been many stunning contributions to Sahana (PHP) both in bug fixing and adding new features. These developers have also been caught up in the complete lack of leadership provided by the Sahana (PHP) PMC.

Tearing the old PMC down
If I had been off the mark in my original comments, I would have expected a lot of replies in the negative. I received none – neither publicly or privately. So, I can only assume that you agree with what I said, or you didn’t read my email

I would like to put forward the following proposals to the community – this would effectively close down the existing PMC.
1. That the existing pmc@ email alias be closed down.
2. That we capture for historical and recognition purposes all the members of the PMC and record this on sahanafoundation.org

Do we need a new PMC? Can’t we just do it on maindev?
I would like to think that we can do everything in the open this time, e.g. the new PMC shouldn’t have a separate and private email list. Most of the reasons that the PMC was private originally are now being managed by the Board anyway. We need people to stand up and put their names behind the project, set direction, and lead. Being a part of the new PMC is about taking responsibility and publicly stating that you’re prepared to step up and lead the PHP project, and putting your name behind it.

Standing up a new PMC
I would also like discussion about how we could create a new PMC structure for the PHP project. I believe the membership of the PMC should follow a very different model to the old PMC. The old PMC was based around committership – which this is appropriate in a developer-led project (e.g. Apache HTTPD) with traditional CVS. I don’t believe it is an appropriate model where we are producing a domain-specific application. At the same time, as we move to a distributed CVS, the concept of commitership becomes far less important, and it all becomes about responsibility for merges back into the main repository.

I see there are two key areas that a new PMC needs:
1. It needs domain leadership – I would like to see people from the likes of CUNY and NIH be a part of leading the project from a domain perspective. They have some of our best end-user interaction, and having them on the PMC will be a key means of getting end-user feedback incorporated at a strategic level in the project.
2. It needs technical leadership – to act quickly and responsively to ideas and requests from the community around the likes of PHP framework choice, infrastructure, merges, and release management process (recognising that releases also need to be linked to the domain and end-user needs).

I think there are two simple membership rules (in concept) required for the new PMC.
1. Anyone that is prepared to take a leadership role in the project can join.
2. Anyone that becomes inactive or fails to ‘get things done’ is removed from the PMC (e.g. lack of participation in voting)

The PMC has to be about ‘getting things done’ and should no longer be a part of a coder>committer>PMC pathway. As this is not a developer-led project, but rather a domain-led project, the traditional developer pathway makes no sense.

First Actions for the new PMC
There are some urgent actions required by members of a new PHP PMC.
* Developing project and mentor capacity for GSOC 2010
* Consider tagging 0.6.2 as a dead branch (in terms of focusing volunteers at least)
* Identify the trunk for future development focus (I believe we should adopt the RELIEF branch)
* Future direction
* Oversee the PHP framework discussion
* Can PHP be differentiated from Python
* Is it an effective use of volunteer resource to move Sahana PHP to a modern PHP framework, or is it more effective to adopt Sahana Python (given they are already a solid 15 months ahead)

Implications for GSOC
If the Sahana Software Foundation is announced as a GSOC mentoring organisation later this week, and we don’t have an active leadership team for the PHP project, then it will be a lot harder to justify GSOC slots going to the PHP project. Remember that this year each project is going to be responsible for managing project selection, mentors etc. As a GSOC Admin for the Sahana Software Foundation – I (and David) need to see strong leadership and support available within the project to be able to make slots available to the project.

Want PHP to succeed? Then it’s time to step up?
Who is prepared to take responsibility and lead the PHP project forward? There are many names that come to mind given recent discussions – Kethees, Chad, Greg, Glenn, Chamindra. Please consider forming a new and active PMC this week as there is a lot that needs to happen. It is critically important that a leadership team is formed quickly and able to start coordinating some of the actions outlined above.

The future of the PHP project is in your hands – if you want it to succeed, now is the time to step up and play your part.

Cheers Gavin

This is an email I mailed to the Sahana developer community and the Sahana Software Foundation Board on the 10th of March following recent discussions about branding and the perceived competition between Sahana (PHP) and Sahana (Python).

Sigh. So much for getting on top of my inbox.

/me takes all official role hats off, stores them in the soapbox and steps up

I’m intending to lay down a challenge to many preconceived ideas and current thinking. I believe little will be achieved unless we can collectively – as a community – come to some agreements, and get more things done. So I’m going to be brutally honest – it is time we discussed some of the failings, accept them, and look at where we should go from here.

What is Sahana?
Sahana is not software. Sahana is an ideal to use free and open source software to improve information management before, during and after emergencies, disasters, and providing humanitarian aid. The ideal of Sahana will live long beyond any software project we currently have. The ideal itself was around before[1][2] Sahana and will likely outlive anything we do. I am still committed to this even if all our software projects and the foundation were to turn to dust.

Sahana (PHP) was the original Sahana.
No it wasn’t. The original Sahana was Mambo. And PHP. And Perl. And Java. And probably some other languages that I can’t remember. Sahana (PHP) was not the first, it was phase 2 and that was rewritten from the ground up. Perhaps one of our biggest mistakes in hindsight was not coming up with a clearer name then other than Sahana phase 1 and phase 2.

Our existing contributions will be lost.
No they won’t. This is open source, and once a contribution has been made the contribution is there until someone updates or modifies your original contribution. The code is always accessible from repositories. This isn’t a closed-source proprietary project. The only contributions that will be lost will be future contributions of those that opt out of the community. As long as you hold to the ideal of free and open source software for emergencies, disasters and humanitarian aid – then you’re in the right place.

It’s Sahana (Pythons)’s fault. Or the Board’s.
No, actually, it is the leadership of the PHP project’s fault, and as one of the members of the PMC, I have to shoulder some of that blame like many other people here. Fran et al raised many issues in 2008 about not only the core framework of Sahana PHP, but also infrastructure. He and others tried to work within the PHP project, BUT NOTHING EVER HAPPENED. He tried to work within the rules but the PHP PMC failed him completely. In the end, Fran et al did exactly the right thing to do with open source software and fork/recode. The PHP PMC never ever made any decisions to modernise or improve the core framework. We never responded to Fran’s issues, and now, nearly a whole year later, we still have not made much progress on project infrastructure. It is entirely the PHP PMC’s fault for showing a lack of leadership, and not getting things done. I am honestly at the point where I believe the current PHP PMC is dysfunctional, and I would like to see a brand new leadership team form by those that want to take the reigns of Sahana (PHP). The only thing that Fran et al did wrong was to use the Sahana brand without permission.

Personally, I have become increasingly unwilling to contribute my time to the PHP project because it takes a long time to get things done. If they are done at all. Fran et al have demonstrated that they are prepared to do the hard yards, and focus on development. I applaud their attitude, and when it comes to where I’m willing to put my volunteer time, it is increasingly coming down on the Sahana (Python) side. Honestly, I should have just shut up and learnt to code (again) many years ago.

Likewise, there have been many stunning contributions to Sahana (PHP) both in bug fixing and adding new features. These developers have also been caught up in the complete lack of leadership provided by the Sahana (PHP) PMC.

Why hasn’t Sahana (PHP) adopted modern frameworks and technologies?
Don’t blame this on the PMC or Board. I don’t recall seeing formal proposals come to either for approval. Again, like many other things, plenty of discussion, but no-one ever appeared to pick it up and run with it. There was talk of an experimental Zend branch, but I haven’t heard further discussion on this, or a call for other PHP developers to join in and support the experiment. Again – I assume that the talk has gone nowhere.

On Branding.
Quite simply, both projects (PHP and Python), have fallen into the same trap of branding based on a developer worldview, rather than thinking about how we communicate in 5 words or less what our products do to end users, and how we differentiate them. We need a complete and utter rethink of branding, and I am increasingly favouring the Apache approach whereby Sahana becomes an umbrella brand and as Sanjiva highlighted, the various projects become Sahana {project}.

Disaster Management System will probably need to go too. Increasingly, the international approach is towards Comprehensive Emergency Management[3]. We have to fit in with our end users, and for the increasing majority of them, this is Emergency Management. The concept of Humanitarian Aid is only used in countries without well developed EM systems, and many development projects are working towards helping countries develop more robust EM arrangements e.g. WorldBank and/or Asian Development Bank projects are building local emergency management capacity and capability. So from a domain perspective, Emergency Management is probably the key phrase to focus on for branding purposes for potential end users.

Should the Sahana name be earned?
In due course, yes it should. We are not at the point now where it is workable, but I would like to believe that in a few years, we could define minimum standards for interoperability, and any software application (as opposed to library, or other project) would have to meet some minimum standards of interoperability to be entitled to be called Sahana {project}. Sahana must become a quality standard, and any application that wears its badge should meet some minimum requirements. As well as standards, there are other aspects that should be considered including testing/quality, and the capacity to support remote deployments for extended periods.

Where to from here for Sahana (PHP)?
Personally, I think Sahana (PHP) has a lot of work to do to recapture momentum and accept that big change is needed. Some next steps would probably be:
* accept that 0.6.2 is a dead branch and archive it
* accept that Camp Roberts RELIEF 10-1 is the active branch and treat this as trunk
* dissolve the existing PMC
* let a new leadership team form from whoever is interested in leading the project forward – this should not be developer-only, but should include developers, users and anyone that has a stake in Sahana (PHP) and is prepared to lead it onwards and upwards.
* immediately start work on a new framework (someone suggested moving to Zend a while back – don’t forget this is open source software and you can create an unofficial branch, and just do it).
* or, and this is potentially a very difficult decision, consider whether there is too much work to update Sahana (PHP) and consider moving to support Sahana (Python). If it doesn’t take much work to modernise Sahana (PHP), then great, but if it involves a massive amount of work, then it is better for us all that we build upon the work that has already been done by Sahana (Python).

Shouldn’t businesses be driving Sahana?
There is a mixture of approaches to development of open source software, including anarchy, business-supported and non-profit. Which is the right one? Depends on the solution(s) being developed. I think that long-term, we’ll need both non-profit and business. There are situations when a non-profit e.g. Foundation is a better vehicle for development and attracting funding for developers. At other times businesses are much better for managing contractual development, deployment and support. At this point, I think the Foundation is filling much of the vacuum, but I hope that this year, we will see much more active leadership and support from both Respere and AidIQ. I actively welcome these two companies to step up and push the development of their respective projects. In all honesty, they have better interaction with end users than many of us, and are best placed to close the feedback loop to improving our software applications.

Is it time for a tough decision?
I believe it is.

It is time for me to fully lay my cards on the table. I’ve been involved with Sahana phase 2 since mid-2005. Like many others here, I have invested not only hundreds of volunteer hours in Sahana (probably over a thousand now, but I gave up counting a long time ago) but also a few thousand dollars in airfares, and have probably lost a great many dollars in terms of opportunity cost. I’m as much the volunteer contributor as anyone here, and I haven’t even managed to contribute something tangible such as code

That said, I care little for the past, because we can’t change it. I care everything about the future and where we should head to from here – the future is everything, it is the only thing we can change, and we must focus on that.

I think we would be doing a significant disservice to our potential end users by continuing the confusion of having two software application products that we have not managed to clearly differentiate.

Following the initial Sri Lankan deployment in early 2005, the decision was made that what was effectively Sahana phase 1, was not a good foundation to build upon, and that a ground up rewrite was needed. Sahana phase 2 was born. But we are now continually running up against leadership and fundamental framework issues in phase 2. I believe we are now at the point where it is becoming fairly clear that Sahana phase 2 is not providing a platform that is going to take us well into the decade we have just started. It has given us 5 great years, but I don’t believe it can take us another five. We definitely do not have a leadership team within the current PMC to accomplish that.

I would like to suggest, again personally and with no role hats on, that we accept that it is perhaps best that we wrap up new development on Sahana phase 2. This of course does not mean it is the end or that contributions are wasted. I believe we should encourage any end user interested in Sahana phase 2 to approach Respere and obtain development and support from them. No code will ever be wasted, and it would quite likely have better project leadership than we are currently seeing. The only code that would be wasted would be if we were to now attempt to migrate Sahana (PHP) to a modern framework when the majority of that work has already been completed with Sahana (Python).

I, personally, believe it is time for the volunteer development community to move on. I believe that it is now more appropriate than ever to encourage volunteer developers to focus on Sahana (Python) and to actively promote this as Sahana phase 3 – which fits with the ongoing approach since 2005. The Haiti deployment in early 2010 of Sahana (Python) clearly indicates that it is a modern and workable system. It has a team with strong leadership and the ability to make decisions and move the project forward. It has responded to many of the issues raised against Sahana (PHP). With the surge of development that is occurring since the Haiti earthquake, it now has a solid 18 months of development behind it, a significant real-world deployment, and has been seen by a lot of potential end users. It is probably easier now to port modules from PHP to Python than it will be to implement a new framework in PHP.

We need a modern and attractive focal point for volunteer developers to focus on. I don’t believe that we can provide that using Sahana (PHP) but we can with Sahana (Python).

Please consider what I have presented carefully. If we continue to divide the volunteer development community I think we will all fail – most of us know this, but few have been prepared to air it until recently. Better that we now make a clear decision, within the public community, to end serious volunteer development on Sahana (PHP) and try to rally as many developers as possible around Python as the phase 3 successor to phase 2.

A number of developers have indicated that they don’t mind PHP or Python, but you don’t like having to choose or having resources divided. I have been mulling this for a long time, and more recently discussing it with individuals, but I think the choice has at last become fairly obvious.

The time has come for Sahana phase 2 to move to maintenance-only (and of course paid support and further development is always available from Respere), and for the volunteer community, as a whole, to accept Sahana (Python) as the main development version for volunteer developers. Naturally, if volunteers want to continue support and development of PHP there is nothing stopping them, it is after all open source software.

Sahana (PHP) has done a fantastic job over the past five years, but I think it is time we seriously consider handing the baton over to Sahana (Python) to take us the next five. This is essential not because of the technology, but for community stability and providing a united front to the world at large.

Respectfully yours,

Gavin

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/osveoc/ (registered 2003-08-08)
[2] http://www.rediguana.co.nz/gav/2004/02/01/emergency-management-and-open-source-software/
[3] http://www.iaem.com/publications/documents/PrinciplesofEmergencyManagement.pdf

This is the presentation I gave this evening to the Canterbury Branch of the New Zealand Computer Society.

My friend Ajay has prompted me to create this post, and I’ll try to add to it over time as more cameras with inbuilt GPS. Why is inbuilt GPS important? Well it takes all the hassle out of geotagging photos. As you may have read in some of my previous posts, geotagged images are really useful for Emergency Management.

Whilst there are plenty of solutions available, I’m not going to provide the post-processing options here. I only want to record those that embed the co-ordinates at the time of taking the photo. No products that require post-processing are included.

Digital SLRs inbuilt GPS

• None yet, but maybe this year, there are rumours the Canon 60D may have inbuilt GPS.

Digital SLRs with Accessory

• Nikon D5000, D90, D300, D700, D3,D3X – requires  Nikon GP-1 accessory or a di-GPS
• Canon EOS 40D, EOS 50D, EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 1D Mark III, EOS 1Ds Mark III – requires Canon Wireless File Transmitter accessory (model is dependent on camera body). More info on Canon GPS, and manual page. It additionally requires a third party GPS as well that can provide position using the NMEA protocol.

Point and Shoots

• Nikon Coolpix P6000
• Ricoh 500SE
• Leica V-Lux 20 – as well as having inbuilt GPS, it also appears to have an inbuilt database of 500k points-of-interest that can be used to show nearby sightseeing opportunities (added: 2010-04-22)
• Sony DSC-HX5V Digital Camera

GPS Receivers with Camera

• Garmin Oregon 550, 550T

Mobile Phones with GPS

• Apple iPhone 3G, 3G S
• Nokia – a number of models that I’ll list in due course

Survey Quality solutions

• ikeGPS

Frankly, Nikon appear to have to produce a far smaller and lighter GPS solution for their cameras. Canon requires not only a bulky grip, but still requires a GPS to be added as well. The Nikon GP-1 or di-GPS look to be far more appropriate for field work for emergency management. Additionally, the Nikon solution can be used in conjunction with a battery grip, which allows additional batteries into camera (two, instead of the usual one). The Canon grip increases the bulk of the camera, but the camera itself cannot use a battery grip to extend the battery life in the field. Of course additional batteries can still be carried and swapped – although to replace the camera battery, the WFT must be removed. Finally, the WFT3/4 also require their own battery to operate.

As a Canon user, I am most disappointed with their solution to geotagging-at-shutter-click, and the Nikon approach appears far superier as it adds very little bulk to the camera, and doesn’t get in the way of using a battery grip to double the life of the camera without changing batteries.

I received an interesting attack on my professional credibility recently. I want to recount and discuss this here in broad terms, because it is part of a bigger issue that emergency managers sometimes have to deal with. In short, my ability to provide advice was questioned because I have never been involved in operational response for a disaster.

This of course, didn’t really bother me. As an emergency manager, I know that this is a good thing, after all, why would we want to have more disasters just so that people can gain more experience. Often times, experience with disasters comes down to who is unlucky enough to be there, or to be close enough to help out.

Historically, many emergency managers have come from a variety of different paths into their existing roles. A large number have come from operational roles in emergency services (police, fire, ambulance) or the military. More have come from other related roles such as natural hazards analysis at councils, or researchers into natural hazards. A number of us also come up through the volunteer ranks – we start as rescue volunteers, take a more serious interest, and turn it into a profession.

The thing is, none of these roles come with a guarantee of having previous experience in managing a disaster. The military and emergency services certainly have a fair amount of operational experience and training. Rescue volunteers have a fair amount of training. Hazards analysts and risk managers have the educational background.

This is where the Certified Emergency Manager program from the International Association of Emergency Managers comes into play. It is designed to try and create a common certification process designed around creating a common set of  requirements. These requirements are designed to try and support all the different careers paths that bring people into emergency management. These requirements include:

• Training – in both emergency management and general management
• Management Essay – to demonstrate knowledge, skills and abilities
• References
• Multi-choice Examination
• Experience – across all phases of emergency management
• Education
• Contributions to the Profession

To achieve the CEM, one has to put together a sizeable package to document these requirements, and these are then reviewed by your peers to determine if you should be certified.

Whilst I’m fairly comfortable with what I have done in emergency management over the past 12 years, I haven’t got much to be able to hold up and say, I’m experienced. As a consultant, it is potentially even more difficult as we tend not to work within an operational agency – you typically need to work within the public sector, or an NGO to get those opportunities.

This recent personal attack has been enough to spur me into action to start building my application pack and applying for my CEM. Then at least I’ll be able to demonstrate that I’ve manage to document my experience to my peers, and they agree that my experience meets the requirements laid down in the CEM Program.

I see the hoary old problem of Civil Defence and volunteerism has raised its head again.

There was discussion at the meeting about the very nature of civil defence - and the fact that a lot of people find it a dry, rather boring, topic. It was agreed that the City Council should make more effort to make civil defence more sexy.

While some might find that amusing, or feel we are trivialising civil defence by saying such a thing, there’s a deadly-serious intent behind trying to make civil defence more sexy - to get far more people involved as volunteers and far more families aware of the need to be prepared for a major earthquake or some other large-scale emergency.

I did my first Civil Defence volunteer training sometime mid-1997. Initially I figured it would be a good way to learn some potentially useful life skills – namely about getting up to speed with what happens before, during, and after an emergency or disaster. I started off in rescue – so picked up some good basic training in first aid and light rescue. I was a member of a number of volunteer teams.

It was from here that I became more interested in some of the challenges that a disaster environment presents and decided to do some study in this area and make it a profession.

Anyway, the point I want to make is that retention of volunteers in CD is a challenging problem, and it probably won’t be solved just by trying to ‘make CD sexy’.

One of the biggest problems our volunteer teams faced was actually being utilised. Whilst there was plenty of training available, and we’d have two or three exercises a year – we rarely got the chance to use our skills in anger. Of course, if you think about this, it is a good thing that Civil Defence volunteers are not used that often!

But from a personal and team perspective, it is extremely difficult to maintain interest in volunteering without having some actual experience. Whilst CD volunteers often have a load of enthusiasm and interest, over time, as we are not used, that wanes, and people eventually drop out of CD due to a lack of use.

Unfortunately, making something ‘sexy’ won’t help retention, it will only make attracting new volunteers easier. Any effort to build a sustainable CD volunteer network needs to build on long-term retention, and making sure that volunteers get experiences that makes them stay.

Unfortunately, most experiences that are likely to retain volunteers are either expensive (one of my more memorable training experiences was with the military Iroquois practising rescue hoisting and flying around Wigram) or infrequent (responding to actual events as they happen so infrequently, and even when they do happen, volunteers can often be overlooked).

Given that we can’t control when actual events occur, and plan it into training schedules, these are not really a viable option. In the current economic climate, expensive options are certainly out.

In my mind, this leaves a couple of likely options.

1. Life skills. One approach may be to design CD training so that where possible skills can be applied not only in CD, but also in normal life. This was one of the reasons I started in CD as I thought first aid and rescue were good general life skills to have.
2. Finding more creative means of getting interesting opportunities to maintain volunteers interest in Civil Defence.

Civil Defence won’t maintain volunteers unless opportunities are created for them to continually grow, and gain new experiences. Unfortunately, that comes at a price to ratepayers, and the tricky part will be balancing in at a time when CD budgets seem to be getting trimmed. No small challenge indeed!