by Buddhika Siddhisena

The beginning

December 26, 2004 was the dreadful day that changed the lives for so many and added a new word to our everyday vocabulary – tsunami. The Asian Tsunami was by far one of the deadliest natural disasters in recent times taking over 230,000 lives and leaving millions stranded without shelter.  Managing the aftermath of such a large scale disaster is a daunting task. Helping displaced families to find shelter and  loved ones, reporting missing persons, identifying bodies, getting aid to the most needed in a timely manner are just some of the complexities associated with such as effort.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that software could provide an efficient tool to reduce this complexity. What may be surprising is that until recently there weren't any specialized software that could be useful during disasters. The only viable solution was to try to make use of general purpose software such as word processors, spreadsheets, calendars etc. Why is there a lack of good software dedicated to disaster management and humanitarian efforts, one might question? The unfortunate answer lies in the prevalent  trend within the software industry to focus solely on return on investment (ROI) when  developing software and in the case of disasters, circumstance dictate otherwise.

The aftermath of the Tsunami in  Sri Lanka was in a chaotic nature as was the case with other countries. There were too many victims and a lot of volunteer efforts needed. Unfortunately due to poor co-ordination, the tendency was to concentrate relief efforts only around few locations. Efficient coordination was a challenge and the need for a proper solution based on software was paramount. As none existed at the time, a group of individuals from several organizations volunteered to build one. This system, comprising of several modules, each dedicated to handling a specific challenge in disaster management was appropriately named “Sahana”, or relief.

The “Sahana way”

The Sahana disaster management system was developed in a very short period of time (3 – 4 weeks), with the relentless effort of over 75 volunteer software engineers. From the beginning it was evident the software was going to be released as Free&Open Source Software (FOSS), in the hope that it may be of some use in future disaster management efforts.

Once the dust had settled and there was time for reflection on the past, the desire to improve Sahana to be more customizable and agile was echoed by those involved and as a result Sahana entered into a second phase. Sahana2 as it was called was a complete rewrite in an effort to enhance its breadth in generality and flexibility in being able to adopt to a diverse set of natural disasters.

Consequently the Sahana system was deployed in 5 other natural disasters (at the time of writing) as well as in several other locations such as the city of New York, where it serves as a preemptive tool  for planning and mitigation from natural disasters.

For its efforts, Sahana won numerous awards and recognitions of which the pinnacle was an award titled “Free Software Foundation Award For Social Benefit”. The award was created by Richard M Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), after being inspired by the efforts of the Sahana project.

With this recognition came the formalization of the field of Humanitarian FOSS, where by Free and Open Source Software is used as a means to reduce suffering and provide relief to humanitarian efforts.

Role of FOSS in H-FOSS

Humanitarian FOSS (H-FOSS) is simply the application of FOSS in the domain of humanitarian effort. FOSS is the ideal software candidate when it comes to enabling humanitarian efforts because it is released under a liberal license that is written from a user's standpoint as opposed to that of the vendor.

Some of the benefits of using FOSS for humanitarian efforts are as follows :

• Availability – FOSS is generally released to the public over the internet as a free download. The license is such that it does not require the user to register or obtain permission to deploy and does not limit its usage in any way.

• Adaptability – Having access to the source code means it is possible to customize and adapt to situational needs and without having to ask for permission to modify.

• Community – Synergies from the FOSS community can be harnessed in improving the software or deployment scenario.

• Reusability – The experience and input from one deployment can be re applied to another by means of improvement to the software or documentation.

•  Transparency – As a result of the inner workings of system being open via the availability of source code and communication within the community being open via the mailing list means the design and evolution of the software is transparent. With transparency comes security, an important factor when it comes to storing sensitive data.

Currently there exists only a handful of projects dedicated to H-FOSS such as Sahana, OpenMRS (Open Medical Record System) and InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters) but there are several hundreds if not thousands of potential FOSS applications that could server as H-FOSS applications in repositories such as SourceForge and GoogleCode.

Speed matters

In times of a disaster, it is rare to find a software solution tailored specifically for that disaster and ready to deploy. Instead, one can only hope to find a somewhat similar system that can be modified and deployed in time before it is too late. To that extent H-FOSS has the best chance of succeeding, given its dedicated community with expertise, availability of the Source Code and freedom to modify and adapt without restriction.

A good example of this can be seen with the recent efforts by the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) in the aftermath of freeing civilians from conflict areas and resettling them in camps.  The Ministry of Resettlement, Disaster and Relief Services [http://www.resettlementmin.gov.lk/] needed a system to manage the aid efforts given by NGOs in an efficient manner so that camps that need it most urgently are prioritized.

According to G.W.R Sandaruwan and Ravith Botheju, who are volunteers from the Lanka Software Foundation (LSF), involved with customizing Sahana for GOSL, “majority of the customization was done in about 1.5 months, starting in April of 2009 by just two people”. This tailored Sahana system is already deployed in several camps in Wowniyawa and plans are underway to expand to other camps soon. This goes to show how H-FOSS can be deployed in a timely manner with community involvement to help relieve suffering.

Getting involved

H-FOSS community is always looking for a helping hand whether it is in the form of fresh new ideas to improve a piece of software, testing and reporting bugs, improving documentation, improving the functionality through code submission or just getting the word out by evangelizing. The easiest method of getting involved is to find an interesting project, join it's mailing list and get involved with discussion threads.

There are several opportunities for students to obtain internship with many of the FOSS projects so that they may contribute to the betterment of the project while getting paid for it. For instance, Google runs an annual event called the “Google Summer of Code (Gsoc)” where students are sponsored to work on FOSS projects during their summer vacation. The hfoss.org website also has a similar type of internship for students.

Participating in conferences either as a speaker or an attendee, getting involved with brain storming sessions known as Birds of a Feather (BOF), attending code fests or bug squashing sessions, where coders flock together in a room for a length of time to make good use of their programming skills are just some of the ways to meet the community in person and get involved.

References

·     Sahana web site – http://www.sahana.lk

·     OpenMRS web site – http://www.openmrs.org

·     InSTEDD web site – http://instedd.org

·     The Humanitarian FOSS Project – http://hfoss.org

·     Google summer of code – http://code.google.com/soc

·     SourceForge – http://www.sourceforge.net

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

Helping hand Image Licensed under Creative Commons from http://www.flickr.com/photos/juberphoto/3191461515/