This is an old revision of the document!
Table of Contents
Domain Standards
Emergency Management Disaster Standards
PFIF
Person Finder Interchange Format (PFIF)
PFIF is designed for the exchange of information about missing and found persons among web-based registries set up for a particular disaster. The information is provided by the general public, and is publically searchable. [PFIF] PFIF was created by Ka-Ping Yee in 2006, in response to the impact of hurricane Katrina along the US Gulf Coast, and the resulting proliferation of pop-up, incompatible web sites for missing-person reports. Through version 1.1, its repository was hosted by Salesforce, Inc. Version 1.2 addressed the Haitian earthquake of January, 2010, by including improvements to make the format more international. This was done in association with Google, which became the main data aggregator with its “Google Person Finder” (PF) repository. This version was also deployed during the Chile and Christchurch, New Zealand earthquakes. Version 1.3 was defined in early 2011, and deployed towards the end of reporting about the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Tohoku region of Japan. Traditionally considered a de facto standard, PFIF (now up to version 1.4) has been incorporated as a component of the new “Tracking Emergency Clients” specification, now under formal standardization consideration by OASIS.
[PFIF] Specifications (pre-TEC) for version 1.1 - 1.4 are at http://zesty.ca/pfif/ .
Sahana's Krakatoa incorporated early PFIF code, with the first production fetch from Google PF during the Haiti earthquake. Krakatoa's successor, Vesuvius, and its NLM “People Locator” (PL) instance, continue to incorporate PFIF as it evolves, and participate in active exchange (e.g., during the Japanese tsunami). Currently, interchange of data between PL and PF supports PFIF 1.4 in both directions, but some elements of the Vesuvius user interface need to evolve during 2013 to reflect changes between PFIF 1.3 and 1.4.
DVI
Disaster Victim Identification (DVI)
EDXL
Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) is an OASIS advocated and managed collection of data standards
Sahana modules that are EDXL compliant
ICS/NIMS
An Incident Command System (ICS) is an organizational structure and vocabulary for event management and response that can be applied across jurisdictional boundaries.
For More
- For an overview of terminology in this field, including ICS/NIMS, see: Emergency Management Glossary of Terms (pdf). Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management. The George Washington University, United States. 2010.
- From a 2002 US National Institute of Justice report: desired features and capabilities of an emergency management system (e.g., compatibilities with ICS).
OCHA
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has been supporting the definition of “Common Operational Data Sets” (e.g., in the Pacific and Asia). The effectiveness of this ambitious effort is as yet unclear.
