| Developer(s) | Sahana Software Foundation |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 0.9.1 (Vesuvius) and 0.5.4 (Eden) / 2010 |
| Written in | PHP, Javascript, Perl, HTML, Python |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Platform | Apache, MySQL |
| Available in | English - Language packs available for v.0.6.2.2 for Arabic, Bahasa Indonesian, Bengali, Burmese, Simplified Chinese, English/UK, English/US, German, Hindi, Portuguese & Portuguese/Brazil, Russian, Sinhala, Spanish, Spanish/Latin America, and Tamil. |
| Type | Disaster Management System |
| License | LGPL and MIT |
| Website | www.sahanafoundation.org |
The Sahana Free and Open Source Disaster Management System was conceived during the 2004 Sri Lanka tsunami. The system was developed to help manage the disaster and was deployed by the Sri Lankan government's Center of National Operations (CNO), which included the Center of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA). A second round of funding was provided by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). The project has grown, with deployments during other disasters such as the Asian Quake in Pakistan (2005), Southern Leyte Mudslide Disaster in Philippines (2006) and the Jogjakarta Earthquake in Indonesia (2006).
Sahana currently has three projects: Eden, being developed in Python; Agasti, being developed in PHP; and the localization project, L10n.
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The Sahana project aims to provide a set of modular, web-based disaster management applications.
Sahana also includes tools for synchronization between multiple instances, allowing for responders or district offices to capture data on victims in the field and exchange the data with the other field offices, headquarters or responders.
The tsunami that hit Sri Lanka on December 26, 2004, resulted in a massive outpouring of support for the relief of the nearly one million people that it affected. The Sahana was created for information management and collaboration in the aftermath.[1]
Past Deployments
Sahana has developed into a community founded by a humanitarian consultant, Paul Currion, and the Sahana project lead, Chamindra de Silva. Much of their work is based on the more generic ideals of Humanitarian-FOSS, where the ideals of FOSS are applied for building humanitarian-ICT applications or applications built to help alleviate human suffering. The community consists of a mailing list and an active wiki with membership including Emergency Management practitioners, Humanitarian Consultants, Crisis Management Academics and Free and Open Source developers from around the world. Domain representation in this group includes members from ISCRAM, UNDP, Red Cross, IBM, Saravodaya (largest NGO in Sri Lanka), Australian Fire Services, etc.
They have been recognized by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), where it inspired a new FSF Award for Projects of Social Benefit, which is broader in coverage than humanitarian-FOSS and by the UNDP IOSN on their Humanitarian-FOSS Portal.[2]
The Sahana Project has resulted in independent research projects. Professor Louiqa Raschid of the University of Maryland is leading/guiding a team in Sahana and Disaster Management research.
Sahana has been presented at numerous conferences/workshops/events and already has one paper accepted for an international conference. A paper on Sahana and Disaster Management was accepted for the 2nd International Conference on Information and Automation 2006.[3] Due to the lack of previous research in ICT for Disaster Management, research has played a key role in Sahana's development.[4]
Sahana is also a participating project in Google Summer of Code.