During an emergency, many organisations produce a Situation Report (SITREP) that provides an overview of the event from that organisations perspective based on information gathered to date. It is a summary report that outlines not only the events to date, but also resources deployed, actions taken etc. SITREP's are traditionally provided in paper format, but are increasingly being delivered via office documents - particularly in pdf and/or doc formats. Depending on the nature of the event, SITREP's can be update multiple times a day.

There are a number of problems with SITREPs as they are traditionally managed. These include:

• If SITREPs are updately infrequently it is difficult to communicate recently discovered information
• It can be difficult to identify changes between SITREPs
• It can be difficult to ensure all organisations are using the same version SITREP

The desired outcome of this module is to produce a Sahana module that provides the ability to publish a live SITREP that can be access by all authorised users.

• Multiple Incidents - a Live SITREP page is created for each Incident in the Sahana database
• Highlight changes - it should be possible to highlight recent changes to the text - new text may be marked as red, and as the age of the modification ages back to a custom defined time, the text returns to black. If a threshold is set at say four hours, then all text that hasn't been changed in four hours is the default black, whilst the newest text is red, with text in between graduating red to black as it gets older.
• Easy edit - for users with appropriate rights, it should be easy to edit a section of the SITREP. (With AJAX it may be possible to edit in place)
• Automated production of versions - it can be important to produce 'milestone' documents. It should be possible for the module to produce easily accessible versions of the Live SITREP - such as a snapshot taken every hour.
• Page refreshing - remote organisations will monitor the Live SITREP via a webpage. This page should have the option of autorefreshing at a rate defined by the Sahana administrator.
• Flash messages - it should be possible to highlight urgent updates utilising the page refreshing to display a red highlight box that draws the remote viewers attention to an important piece of updated information.
• SITREP templates - it should be possible to define default templates in the administrative section. This would consist of producing a SITREP outline of headings and defining the data type for each section. Some sections may be free-form text, others may be a number or date-time field. The template used will vary depending on the type of organisation and the nature of the event.
• Dynamic fields - some fields may be able to be linked to key values in the Sahana database such as the number of missing people that is dynamically obtained from the Missing Person Registry. These would be managed via the SITREP template.
• Automatic charting - numeric fields in the Live SITREP could automatically produce charts that plot the change in value over time.
• Change tracking - all modifications should identify the role and name of the person that made the change, as well as the date/time the section was last modified. This header information could use the same graduated colour scheme to indicate the general age of the last update of this section.
• Review of previous versions - it should be possible to step back in time and view previous versions of the Live SITREP.
• Support of 'projected' mode - in some circumstances a fullscreen browser view will be projected onto a large screen in an Emergency Operations Centre. To support this, it should be possible to build a basic slideshow that repeatedly cycles through a web page designed to support display at 1024×768 in full screen browser view. Some views in this mode may act as a dashboard display of critical information - such as the number of all missing people. This mode will also require larger fonts and support for different colour schemes to accommodate lighting in the EOC.

Above is a mind map view of the Sahana “Situation Report” module. Base functionality of the module was developed and will be extended and integrated with other modules and functionalities soon. Following features have been implemented,

• Create new reports.
• View all available reports:
  • Select and view individual report - summary, development, action, key-figures
  • Select and update individual report - summary, development, action, key-figures

• Easy edit via FCKEditor or TinyMCE
• Track and Provide details of last updated user and date/time

More screen shots of the above functionality are available here : http://wiki.respere.com/index.php/Sahana_sitrep_mindmap

• Sort/View based on the Sahana incidents
• Production of versions (snap-shot of the documents and/or milestones)
• Page refreshing at a rate that specified in the admin section (can be adjustable by Admin)
• Flash section of a report (in different color)
• Templates
• Review of previous version of a Report
• Projected mode support