Gav's Blog

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!

This is the original text I submitted to The Box feature on Disaster Tech on Tuesday the 2nd of June, 2009. It is archived here for my records. It also includes some additional content that didn’t make it to the print edition.

On December 26, 2004, the Boxing Day tsunami killed over 35 thousand people and displaced over half a million people in Sri Lanka alone. A massive humanitarian crisis played out in numerous other countries also affected by the magnitude 9+ Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and resulting tsunami. Within days it became apparent that an information system was needed to manage the massive amounts of information being generated about who was doing what, and where – at one point there were approximately 1,100 registered NGO’s operating in Sri Lanka.

It was decided by a group of Sri Lankan IT professionals that a system needed to be built to better manage the information as they couldn’t find any existing free solutions that could be quickly deployed. Free, was critical, as they couldn’t afford any commercial solutions.

Sahana was implemented within a week by around four hundred IT volunteers, and it was named after the Sinhalese word for relief. Initially it provided tools for tracking missing persons, organisations involved in response, locations and details of camps set up in response to the tsunami, and a means of accepting requests for resources such as food, water and medicine.

Following the tsunami, the Swedish International Development Agency provided funding to take the lessons learnt from writing and deploying software during a disaster, and to rebuild Sahana from the ground up, and release it as free and open source software to the world. After all, Sri Lanka had needed an open and available system to manage disaster information, surely other countries should benefit from their experience?

Since 2005, Sahana has been officially deployed to earthquakes in Pakistan, Indonesia, China and Peru; a mudslide in the Philippines; and has been deployed in New York City as a preparedness measure to help manage storm evacuations.

Being free and open source software has been critical to Sahana’s success. The more accessible a system is, the more likely it is to be adopted, used and improved. Even in developed countries, many disaster agencies are poorly funded and often cannot justify significant expenditure on systems – commercial systems are too expensive. With pressure being applied to many public budgets, the significance of this is even greater now. Perhaps the greatest benefit of applying open source approaches is that it encourages a collaborative and communal approach to improving the system. As more countries with experience in disaster management contribute to its development, this will also act as a form of expertise transfer to countries that may not have as much experience with disasters.

Following Hurricane Katrina, there were nearly 50 websites created to track missing and displaced persons – all using different systems, all collecting duplicate information, and few of them sharing. Many of the potential benefits of the technology were lost due to a lack of co-ordination and massive replication of data. Access to tools such as Sahana will be more efficient as they can be deployed faster than solutions developed after an event occurs.

Normally, management involves a ‘leisurely’ process to collect as much information as possible, to then decide what actions should be taken. This is completely the opposite immediately following a disaster whereby decisions have to be made, sometimes with little or no information and no time to gather it.

A key benefit that IT can provide is in linking silos of information held by different organisations – everyone has a better shared picture of what has happened, what is occurring now, and what is planned.

Software, however, is just one aspect. There is a need for open data (such as maps and statistics) and standards to ensure that the multitude of systems can connect to each other and share information.

The most important aspect is having the relationships between organisations set up in advance of a disaster. This results in organisations having the confidence to connect their systems and share information. Without shared information the rest of the system will lose many potential benefits that IT can bring to disaster management.

Often, little or no information is available to support decision-making – emergency managers are forced to make complex decisions without having the luxury of all the required information.

A disaster can produce a massive number of tasks requiring hundreds of organisations and thousands of people to co-ordinate activity – meaning that there will always be some prioritisation needed. What should be done first? What can wait until later? How should an impacted community prioritise response and recovery with limited resources?

The benefits are not just limited to agencies and NGO’s. The next evolutionary step will be to adopt an approach called ‘crowd sourcing’ whereby members of the community are provided with tools to interact with each other and emergency managers.

This may be achieved with applications that run on mobile phones linking people and even submitting information from the field directly to Sahana servers. Imagine the situation where a passerby can take a georeferenced photo of some disaster damage, and if communications networks are working, send that directly to the system emergency managers are using to manage the event. There are a numberof efforts underway looking at how social networks and websites such as Facebook and Twitter can be utilised during a disaster.

Disaster IT is really a force multiplier. It won’t usually save lives, but it will allow a better shared understanding of the problems, and will lead to more effective and co-ordinated response. It allows those responding to an event, whether an organisation or individual, to quickly access information and better inform decision-making. This can lead to less suffering and a quicker recovery for affected communities.

Design for Disaster
Computer systems can often be fragile by their design – they are especially reliant upon power and communications. If any of these are lost during a disaster, the value of a system can quickly be lost if it has not been designed to operate in adverse environments. Here are some design decisions that are very important for disaster applications:

• Low bandwidth – we’ve all become accustomed to sucking bandwidth through massive broadband pipes, but during a disaster network connectivity for emergency managers may be limited to dialup speeds over satellite or digital radio connections. Disaster software needs to be designed for very efficient transfer of information, and should never assume vast quantities of bandwidth are available. At at extreme, some information may even be transferred by SMS or USB memory stick.
• Intermittent connectivity – during a disaster communications will likely fail multiple times before they are finally restored. This means that most ’software as a service’ or web applications on the Internet will be of little use to emergency managers. Disaster software needs to be stored and run locally, and be able to work without a connection to the Internet.
• Synchronisation – one of the best techniques for designing around low bandwidth and intermittent connectivity, is to design a system to be able to synchronise information between two systems when communications are available. When communications later fail, both systems will have a copy of the same data, and can access it locally until communications are restored.
• Low power – power can, and will fail during a disaster, so disaster software needs to be designed to run on low power devices. Laptops and notebooks are good targets as they are self-contained, have built-in batteries, and can be charged from solar cells or generators. Large, power hungry servers can be difficult to move and support in a disaster environment.

How I became involved

One might ask how a Kiwi became involved in Sahana. Ever since training as a Civil Defence volunteer in the late 90’s, I had an interest in how information technology could be used to improve disaster management. The tsunami in 2004 acted as the catalyst for Sri Lankan computer programmers to produce Sahana. I have been volunteering with the project since 2005. In September 2005, he helped facilitate a workshop in Colombo that formed the basis for the current version of Sahana. In March this year he attended a Sahana conference and Board meeting in Sri Lanka. At the Board meeting the existing ‘owner’ of Sahana – the Lanka Software Foundation – agreed to hand the project over to the open source community. Gavin is a member of the transition Board that is in the process of forming an international non-profit foundation that can accept financial donations, and act as the ‘custodian’ of Sahana.

How you can help

There are numerous ways Sahana is looking for help. Once registered, we will be able to accept financial donations that will be used to fund development. In the meantime, we are looking for open source programmers with web development skills (including mapping). If you’re not a programmer, we are always looking for translators that can convert the english text and documentation into many different languages. Perhaps most importantly, we are looking for experienced emergency managers to help provide design advice to the Sahana community and guide the developers.

Microsoft recently released an invitation-only beta of Vine, a social networking application to allow people to share information with their networks, and receive news and public safety alerts for areas they are interested in. It appears to integrate with Twitter and Facebook, and allows you to post and receive information. Microsoft is targeting Vine as a tool for both routine and emergency use. It has just entered testing, but has some potential as a social networking tools for disasters. To ultimately be successful, it will need to run on Mac, Linux, and popular mobile phones such as Symbian, and the iPhone so we can carry it in our pockets. It also needs to interoperate with similar applications from other vendors, but most of all be free so that price does not dissuade adoption.

Update – I received an invite, but the current beta is really only keyed for US usage.

The issue of community-produced maps has reared its head on the IAEM email list today – closely linked to my post back on the 26th. The following issue was raised, and I wanted to share my reply to this.

Lack of citation was my major concern with the other available maps that have been in wide circulation. The second concern with the other maps is that they showed push-pins when they did not have or could not cite the data to support specific points.

My reply follows:

I think you’ll find that most of those maps do actually have references, in the case of the Google Maps mash-ups, they are contained in the hundreds of comments accessible from the same page as the maps. In fact, it is generally from the posting of these references in the comments, that the Google Maps get updated. What they have failed to to is to make it easier to reference the citations, by not including the reference in the popup bubble above the marker. But if you read through all the comments, you’ll likely find most of the citations there.

Another big failure is to create a timeline/history so that one can see the growth/change in numbers over time for each marker. Most of the maps are purely a snapshot of the here-and-now, and give no context via history.

The real point that emergency managers should take away from this is the following.

Agencies that ‘own’ the source information (e.g. CDC, WHO, and health agencies in every other country in this case), really should be publishing authoritative georeferenced data at the source. If agencies did this, then there would be no need for these ‘amateur’ cartographic efforts to hack together information from news, rumours and other sources. It would sure save a lot of time and effort in people trying to recreate information that already exists and either hasn’t been released, or has not been converted to a georeferenced format.

Likewise, it isn’t really the role of companies to provide this information. Once again, they are just filling a gap that we, as emergency managers, have failed to meet.

The mashup culture is a direct result of a failure by emergency managers to make information available in a form that end users clearly want it (as evidenced by the time and effort they will put into recreating the data in the form that they want to use it).

Perhaps we really should start thinking seriously about how we can produce authoritative information in formats that our communities want.

If you have a look at the example map I created in under an hour on the 26th, you’ll note that I created a little table in each popup for a marker that contained a link to the source article, and in the case of the San Diego marker, included daily figures for three days so it was possible to track the state of that marker over time.In addition, I scaled the marker images so that they were more proportional to the number of cases – a marker for each infection quickly produced an unreadable map, hence it seemed a better approach is to produce summary markers for each location, with the size of the marker indicating the numbers.

The real trick is going to be to produce a web application to track and manage this information, that can then export it in a suitable form to display the information as discussed above. This is clearly something we should look at for Sahana.

Three months ago I blogged about the Conficker worm and its relevance for emergency managers. Since then, I’ve rumours that a number of health agencies were still having problems with their email systems. The reason I raise this again, is that now, with a large national response to a potential pandemic taking place, one hopes that Conficker has been well and truly removed from all Health systems (both Ministry and DHB).

If Conficker is still impacting on health agency IT systems during this period of increased activity, then honestly, heads need to roll at MOH.