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Sahana Software Foundation
The Mission of the Sahana Software Foundation is to help alleviate human suffering by giving emergency managers, disaster response professionals and communities access to the information that they need to better prepare for and respond to disasters through the development and promotion of free and open source software and open standards.
The Sahana Software Foundation was established in 2009 as a non-profit organization to serve the needs and requirements of a diverse group of customers:
- Government agencies and jurisdictions at the national, provincial or state, and local levels
- UN Agencies, international and local charitable organizations (NGOs)
- Communities & disaster victims
- Technology companies & software developers
Our Vision is to build and sustain a global open and collaborative community of contributors to information and communications technologies for disaster management, in order to:
- Support the needs of Sahana customers through promoting and developing innovative open source solutions for disaster information management
- Support the adoption of open standards for data exchange between information systems to manage disaster data.
In order to fulfill its mission and vision, the following Objectives guide Foundation activities:
- Help alleviate human suffering and help save lives through the efficient and effective use of technology after a disaster
- Bring efficiencies to disaster response coordination through facilitating effective information sharing between disaster responders and beneficiaries
- Empower disaster victims and responders by providing them with the information they need to help themselves and others
- Build resilience and preparedness through training, education and the deployment of systems for managing disaster information in advance of a disaster.
- Provide a nurturing environment for community development of humanitarian free and open source software applications that support all four phases of emergency management
Please visit the Foundation wiki for more information about the Sahana Software Foundation organization, governance, board, members, licenses and projects.
Sahana and the Google Summer of Code 2010
The Sahana Software Foundation is a Mentoring Organization for the 2010 Google Summer of Code.
Please visit the main Sahana GSOC 2010 entry page
Sahana Response to Haiti Earthquakes
Sahana's Haiti portal can be visited (now for historical archival purposes at http://haiti.sahanafoundation.org
Sahana Information Library
The Sahana Disaster Management System Information Library has several wikis. They are defined by target audience. If you are having difficulty finding the information you are looking for, please email sahana-user@lists.sourceforge.net or visit us at http://sahanafoundation.org/chat. Several experienced Sahana volunteers will be able to assist.
If you are keen to experience Sahana's features, we recommend trying out our demos:
If you like to contribute to the documentation of this WIKI, please ask for a username from any of the WIKI admins
For Organisations Considering Sahana
Sahana is a web-based disaster management application that provides management solutions, focusing on large-scale humanitarian disasters. It enables enhanced coordination by promoting integrated information gathering. It assists collaboration by providing a number of communication mechanisms in the aftermath of a disasters. Sahana is built from free and open source software and released under OSI licenses, which means all users are free to download and use it (and are even free to create commercial derivatives of it)...
How Sahana is Useful in Disaster Situations
Sahana functions both online as well as a stand alone tool for disaster management, depending on the operational considerations. Users can access it via their local machine, from within the network, as part of a corporate intranet or anywhere in world via the Internet. This means it can be installed on a laptop, for workers in the field and at a central command center for overall coordination. When machines are linked, all information can be synchronised, via USB, CD-R the LAN or the Internet...
Supported Operating Systems and Web Browsers
Sahana supports all modern operating systems and browsers, including MS Windows, Mac OSX, Ubuntu and other Unix-like systems. Your browser must have JavaScript enabled and, for Agasti, your operating system must be able to run the Apache HTTP Server, the PHP programming language and MySQL database software. If running Eden then you will need to run Python. If you don't know what these are, the Installation Guides below will assist you.
Deployments and Case Studies
Sahana's strength is also in its track record being deployed for disasters around the world. Known deployments of Sahana include those for the governments of Pakistan, Philippines, Peru, America, and Bangladesh. The full list of Sahana deployments and pre-deployments, some with case studies, highlights how a community of partners can work to deliver the Sahana solution at a time of need.
Advocacy and Training Material
- Introductory: Brochures
- Case Studies:
- Training: Workshop material
Awards and Recognition
- Gartner Inc. Cool Vendor in Risk Management and Compliance - 2010
- Public Private Businesses Inc. Best Practices Award - 2010
- Sourceforge Community Choice Awards Best Project for Government Finalist - 2009
- Free Software Foundation Award for Social Benefit - 2006
- SHG Good Samaritan Award - 2006
- Sourceforge Project of the Month - June 2006
- User Award from Redhat Summit - 2005
Installation Guides
Click here for detailed guides on how to download and install Sahana.
For Users
Please note, not all module are present in released versions of Sahana (v0.6 - v1.0). Some modules are only currently available in either the trunk and/or the Google Summer of Code development repositories. These modules will become available in future releases of Sahana. Examples of this are the Resources and Snapshot modules.
The Sahana community has a friendly community to help with bugs and to receive suggestions, improvement ideas and feature requests.
Support Options
- Support by Email
Please subscribe to the Sahana User list sahana-user@lists.sourceforge.net by clicking here. - Launchpad Answers
Visit https://answers.launchpad.net/sahana. - Mailing List Info
Visit here.
For Administrators
These guides illustrate the functions of the Adminstration module. Administrators should be familiar with Sahana's user privilege and situation management hierarchies and best practices for deployment.
- Disaster Incidents - Allows you to set up disasters, events and incidents.
- Location Config - Disaster location configuration.
- GIS Config - Configure Sahana's situation mapping functionality.
- Localization - Language and language translation.
- Module Config - Add, remove and configure the modules permitted for the deployment.
- Security Config - Configure security policies for the Sahana installation.
- Config Values - Advanced configuration options.
For Trainers
The Sahana Training Program is a week-long induction programme. Here are the course materials.
For Software Developers
Sahana is always looking for developers have have experience in PHP, JavaScript and Python. Here is some useful information if you are considering deploying or developing the application.
- Deployments wiki - Capturing best practices for deploying Sahana.
- Development wiki - Conventions, Guides and HOWTOs for the Sahana developer.
- Standards wiki - Sahana Development and Interop Standards.
- Requirements wiki - Capturing pending requirements for Sahana modules.
The Path To 1.0
Biosurveillance Project
- Description of the pilot project: “Evaluating a real-time biosurveillance program”.
- User Requirement Specifications based on case studies in Tamil Nadu, India and Sri Lanka.
- Biosurveillance Module Data entry and standard reports PHP web application and database software requirement specifications.
- m-HealthSurvey Field data collection J2ME mobile application software requirements specifications.
- T-Cube Web Interface spatio-temporal event detection software requirement specifications.
- CAP Alerting Module software requirement specifications.
For Translators
The Localization and Translation wiki captures techniques for localizing and translating Sahana. It explains how to translate the application for new countries, regions and groups.
For Designers
The Design wiki is where the community unleashes its design skills.
For Documentation Writers
Access
If you need access permission for any of these wikis, please send an email to any of the following wiki administrators. Please include a reason for needing access:
- Fran Boon - francisboon [at] googlemail.com
- Tim McNamara - mcnamara.tim [at] gmail.com
- Dominic Konig - dominic [at] nursix.org (main access person for translators)
- David Bitner - bitner [at] dbspatial.com (main access person for GSoC)
- Ravindra de Silva - ravindra [at] opensource.lk
- Pradeeper Darmedra - pradeeper [at] opensource.lk
- Mifan Careem - mifan [at] opensource.lk
- Chamindra de Silva - chamindra [at] opensource.lk
Translation of Wiki Pages
Sahana wiki pages in other languages than English might be found by appending the ISO 639-1 language code to the namespace of the page, e.g.:
- start (original page) ⇒ start:de (German translation)
- dev:home (original page) ⇒ dev:home:ar (Arabic translation)
If you want to create a translated wiki page, please follow the Wiki Translation Guide
Other Project Information
Project Governance
- Sahana Software Foundation wiki - Information on the Sahana Software Foundation
- Policy and PMC wiki - Policy on the Governance of Sahana
- Temporary area for proposals and ideas for improving Sahana
Academic Research
- Research and Publications wiki - Sahana Research and publications
Image Credits
“Sunflower” copyright FluxBit, released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Licence.