Gav's Blog

Dennis McDonald has again posted a thoughtful article on the application of social networking technologies for disaster response, and invited me to comment on it.

There are a couple of introductory comments I’d like to make before I respond in detail to his article.

The adoption of social networking tools for disaster response appears to be part of a larger movement away from the way information is traditional managed by those responsible for managing disasters. We have already seen this in the geospatial realm where government agencies do not appear to be providing enough geospatial information during a disaster, so we have watched a proliferation of mapping mashups to fulfil the needs that are not currently being met.

The simple fact that many people are choosing more modern tools suggests that the current solutions being provided by those tasked with managing disasters are not working. There appears to be a disconnect between the traditional approach of releasing press releases and situation reports, and the increasing usage of social networking and similar tools by the impacted communities. Emergency managers face a very real threat of being usurped by a collaborative network of individuals that are providing far more up-to-date and accurate information than may be available from official channels. This itself does carry some risk that I will detail later.
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This article was originally written for the July 2006 International Association of Emergency Managers Bulletin.

The rapid growth of the Internet and World Wide Web has spawned the creation of new and potentially useful software applications that may provide benefits to emergency managers. One of these applications that is currently drawing attention is the wiki.

Wiki is the Hawaiian word meaning to hurry, hasten; quick, fast, swift. Wiki software therefore refers to packages that are designed to make it quick and easy to create and modify collaborative web pages on the Internet. They have actually become more powerful and advanced than just for the creation of web content – wikis now power some very content-rich websites including the open source Wikipedia – the open encyclopaedia.

What are some of the key characteristics of a wiki?

• server-based software
• free, with few licensing restrictions
• accessible from any web browser
• can be run on a standalone laptop
• uses html links to reference other pages in the database
• designed for collaboration and sharing
• records all revisions of documents and tracks changes made by users
• immediately highlights recent page changes and by whom

What opportunities exist for wikis in the emergency management domain?

Wiki software has much potential to be used as a collaborative planning tool – whether planning occurs within or between organisations. Rather than passing a word processing document around via email to all participants in the planning process, the plan could instead be created and maintained using a wiki. A secured web site would provide an excellent home where plan developers could log in to check the latest changes and make modifications. The one key benefit over using a document-based approach is that everyone is always guaranteed to be reading and editing the latest version of the plan.

As certain milestones are reached in plan development, it is possible to lock the wiki, and create a ‘snapshot’ of the current plan before continuing the review and development process. Conceptually, this model of development is quite similar to techniques used for managing the development of computer software – with developers sharing a central repository.

In addition to planning, a wiki can also be used as a knowledgebase to store information and references to other documents. For example, certain pages in a wiki could be ‘tagged’ with a pandemic tag. Then, by viewing the pandemic category, it will show all pages that are tagged with pandemic. This provides quick and easy access to relevant information.

The benefits of wikis do not end when response starts. Conceptually, wikis can be installed on laptops or PDA’s enabling responders to have an entire knowledgebase available on a PDA including all the links and available plans.

Wikis could be used on a set of wireless laptops as a tool to assist your incident management system of choice. For example, the response plan developed in the EOC could be created in a wiki, and then planning/intel, operations, logistics, finance, information could collaborate on the one document with each section being able to view the other sections.

Wikis are also starting to be used in response and recovery by those people that have access to power and communications. Probably the best recent example is the Katrina Help Info wiki that is used to consolidate response and recovery information following a disaster – in effect creating a portal for the event with links to other agencies websites. In this manner, a wiki could be used as a public information system where key infrastructure is available.

Another example is the Hurricane Katrina web page on Wikipedia which started as a collaborative effort to record open source situation information. In the case of the Flu Wiki, wikis are even being used to develop a community knowledgebase about a hazard before the event.

It is important to note at this point that public wikis with permissive access controls can have issues with the quality and authenticity of information provided. Restriction of editing rights to approved and trained personnel can ensure that quality of information contained in the wiki is not threatened.

The next likely development is going to be the consolidation of wikis and community mapping projects such as the Hurricane Information Maps that were developed following Hurricane Katrina and utilise Google Maps. The combination of information contained in a wiki linked to spatial references and presented on a map will provide a very powerful information resource for response and recovery.

I wrote this article for the July 2006 International Association of Emergency Managers Bulletin.

In February 2004, I wrote an article for the IAEM Bulletin outlining some of the benefits that open source software had the potential to provide for emergency managers. At that time, little open source software existed for emergency management, and I had just come out of a simple attempt in 2003 to create a Web-based disaster management system. That effort failed, for while there was a well-recognized need for open source disaster management software, there were no real drivers to encourage development of a solution.

2004 Tsunami Spurs Development of Sahana

The driver came with the tsunami that struck Sri Lanka on Dec. 26, 2004, which prompted the development of a free and open source solution called Sahana. Within a couple of days, the need for a system to manage vast quantities of information became obvious, along with the need to attempt to coordinate 1,300 NGOs responding to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. In the following days and weeks, a Web-based system for managing disaster information was built on-the-fly based on the most pressing needs. Accordingly, the following were the first modules developed:

• People Registry – track and match victims of a disaster.
• Organization Registry – register, connect and track NGOs involved in response.
• Camp Management System – register and track camps.
• Request/Assistance Management System – record, track and match requests and offers of assistance.

Sahana development was initially led by the Lanka Software Foundation and supported by volunteers from the Sri Lankan IT industry. As the immediate need for Sahana subsided in the months following the tsunami, more international contributors became involved in the project, myself included. These ranged from programmers wanting to help out, to those who wanted to offer assistance drawing upon their disaster experiences, including emergency managers.The positive feedback to Sahana prompted further development to add more response and recovery capabilities applicable to any disaster management situation.Longer-term, the goal is to use Sahana as a means of encouraging comprehensive emergency management in communities by supporting preparation and mitigation. This will start by providing tools to incorporate plans and reference material, such as communication directories in advance and other techniques to encourage greater interagency co-ordination before an event.

Capabilites

Sahana has been designed to operate in a diverse range of environments due to the nature of disasters. It can run on Web servers and laptops, and has even been installed on a PDA. Over time, it will support both standalone and networked modes of operation and allow communication between multiple Sahana servers, including synchronization of data.There are a number of future modules planned or under development:

• Disaster Impact Assessment.
• Alerting.
• Inventory/Supply Chain/Logistics.
• Volunteer Coordination.
• Intelligence.
• Response/Rescue Team Management.

In addition, there are a number of key technologies identified for inclusion:

• Mapping/GIS, and GPS integration – it can already use Google Maps.
• Biometrics.
• Provision of information via open standards:
  • Common Alerting Protocol (OASIS/CAP).
  • Emergency Data Exchange Protocol (OASIS/EDXL).
  • Various OpenGIS Protocols (OpenGIS Consortium).
• Support of existing paperbased forms.
• PDA forms for remote fieldwork.

Deployment

Sahana has seen official deploy ments in multiple events, including the Sri Lankan response to the tsunami in 2004, the 2005 earth quake in Pakistan and the 2006 mudslide in the Philippines. It has also recently seen unofficial deployment in support of the Yogjakartra earthquake and in preparation for an eruption of Mt. Merapi. Sri Lanka’s largest NGO is also deploying Sahana within their disaster unit.

Recent Events

In mid-May 2006, a workshop was held in New York that brought together key members of the Sahana development community and IBM. The meeting served two purposes:

1. To discuss IBM support of the project, and
2. To consider further development of modules for Sahana that could be used during response to a pandemic.

A pandemic presents an interesting opportunity for the deployment of Web-based disaster management systems, as most infrastructure should be operating normally (relative to a hurricane or earthquake).The Sahana project is interested in contributions, be they time or financial. Time contributions can be made in providing design advice based upon disaster experience, writing the code, testing Sahana or helping to write the documentation. Financial contributions will be used to target module development, such as sponsoring development of a specific module or supporting the core development team that works full time. An international community maintains Sahana, and all contributions are provided back to that community at no cost – a share-and-share-alike ethos to ensure that everyone benefits. Sahana is free to use and has no licensing costs associated with it.

Links

• Sahana Web Site
• Sahana on Wikipedia
• Dr Sanjiva Weerawarana’s Blog, a record of initial Sahana deployment (entry1, entry2)

This article was originally written for and published in the February 2004 International Association of Emergency Managers Bulletin.

What is Open Source and what are the benefits to Emergency Managers?

The spread of the Internet has given life to what some may say is a radical change in which software is developed. Traditionally, software development has been driven by commercial vendors that provide you with a software package that cannot be directly modified to suit your organisations needs. Yes, you may be able to customise it with options and configuration settings, but if it doesn’t implement a function you need, there is usually little hope of getting it implemented. This is because you do not have access to the source code – the human readable code that tells the program how to operate. Open Source Software (OSS) changes all that.

What is Open Source Software? It is software that people can freely read, copy and modify the source code. This allows people to improve software, adapt it, and fix bugs. Additionally, this can often happen at a greater speed than conventional software development. But, the essential point with OSS is that you have the source code to the software, and the freedom to modify it, and redistribute your modifications.

The Internet has brought about the spread of Open Source Software because it provides a means of linking programmers and users around the world. The individuals come together on a project-by-project basis to develop software for a specific purpose.

So how can Emergency Managers benefit from Open Source Software?

Repair and Maintenance
Have you ever found a bug in your software, but you’ve had to wait until the vendor releases the next version of the software to fix it? Well, if you are using OSS, you can fix it yourself, or pay someone to fix it for you. Additionally, your fix then is released back to the community so all benefit from fixing the bug.

Licensing and Cost
Emergency Management Agencies often are not well funded, with some having to make do with whatever hardware and software comes their way. OSS provides an extremely cost-effective means of providing functionality. For example, if you receive Windows PC’s with no office software, you could download and install OpenOffice.org – a suite of office productivity software for free, and it is also compatible with Microsoft Office files. Other day-to-day software solutions are available, including web-based groupware servers. Of course you can install the software as many times as you like – consider how expensive that would be with commercial software?

Extendibility
If you want a specific function added to your open source EM software, you can always pay a programmer to implement it for you. The real benefit of OSS comes when these additions are feed back to the community at large, so the community as a whole benefits, and spreads the cost of development. It also gives you a chance to support a programmer in you town, rather than across the country or the other side of the world!

Flexibility
Once again, with the source code in hand, you can customise the application to allow for internal consistency with jargon in your organisation. By changing the terminology used within the application, you can reduce the training requirements, and maintain consistency with other applications.

Economies of Scale
There is the potential for pooling of resources to achieve economies of scale. One EMA may not be able to afford to develop an EM application. However, by working with others and pooling resources, it would be possible to come up with enough funds to provide full time jobs for people to work on OSS – specifically an EM application (or suite of applications).

Speed
And finally, because you have the source code, you are not tied into the commercial vendors release schedule. Want that feature? Need a bug squashed? You can pay someone to do it right now.

At this stage however, there is little Open Source Software specifically designed for Emergency Management. But that is about to change. Some of the base functionality is the same across most organisations – such as a contact directory, basic message handling etc. Rather than having to build all this functionality from scratch however, we can take an existing stable OSS project (e.g. egroupware) that has some functionality required for emergency management, such as groupware which provides contact directories, calendars, user authentication etc, and then develop and integrate specific emergency management functions, such as alerts, and message handling. This translates to months not years to get a useable product into development.

Links to Popular Open Source Software and Information Sites

• Mozilla Firefox – a very popular open source web browser
• OpenOffice.org – open source office software
• Open Source Initiative
• The OpenCD – a CD containly a wide range of open source software packaged on a CD
• MediaWiki
• eGroupWare – web-based collaboration software
• WordPress – the software that runs this website is also open source