Suggestions for disaster management tools for the Turkey-Syria earthquake

[Barış Bozkurt]

Dear all,

Most of you probably heard about the earthquake last week in Turkey-Syria region with devastating effects. 

The humanitarian groups work hard to help the situation and the biggest problem had been in the organisation. While governmental body for disaster management has their management software, there has been problems in leadership and NGOs and municipality bodies were more effective on the site (who do not use such software). Lots of software volunteer groups were formed very quickly and they re-invented many quick-and-dirty tools to help organisations of aids. 

Being a university prof. teaching coding, I also formed a small action group and has been trying to develop a strategy before jumping in building yet another tool that may end up not being used at all. Within the first week of the event, our observation was that the large portion of the aid was organised using whatsapp groups, twitter, excel sheets,... leaving aside all other tools quickly developed. 

Our team decided to explore what is already available on the web that is already used in various previous disasters. We spotted a few and now exploring them. We aim developing an understanding of the available tools and their potentials, and then contacting the most effective NGOs and municipalities to discuss their needs and if some existing tools may be of use, and if they are willing to invest their time in it. Currently our focus is to help organisation of support to those rescued, are alive and in need after the event and then focus on getting ready for the next disaster. We are talking about millions of people here. the region was home to 13-14 million people with low quality buildings hit by two 7+ earthquakes.

Sahana Eden is in our radar. I am a bit puzzled while trying to understand if the project is discontinued or not. From what I can find on the web, it seems active work on the tools stopped. The tool seems to suit our needs perfectly but I am questioning if it is among the best choice, if I should be checking other resources instead. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks to all good hearts that provided these tools for humanity and continue to support it.

Baris Bozkurt

Izmir/Turkey

[Louiqa Raschid]

Hi Baris,

The Eden code base seems to be in a fairly stable state so there should be low risk in using it.

There has been no active development for some time so if you need new features then that could be an issue.

Most people have deployed on AWS EC2 without too many issues.

https://sahanafoundation.org/install-sahana-eden/

[Barış Bozkurt]

Thanks a lot Louiqa! I appreciate the feedback. Best regards.

Baris 

[Fran Boon]

Hi Baris,

The first thing to think through when looking to provide an IT solution for a Disaster is to work out exactly which workflow you are trying to assist.
This leads on to who the actors are who would need to use the system.
We can then look at whether Sahana Eden is a good fit for this: out-of-the-box, with a little configuration or with more significant customisation.
There is a Turkish translation, although it would need updating if some of the actors should see a Turkish interface.

In general, it is *very* hard to deploy new IT solutions in a Disaster....people working on the support are incredibly overloaded & don't have time to think through their needs, evaluate or learn new systems.
These really should have been deployed as part of preparedness activities & used in drills.
However, of course, we are where we are & I fully appreciate the desire to do something.
Whilst Sahana Eden is a capable & versatile system, I would urge thinking as simple as possible...try & solve 1 thing well, before looking at trying to solve other things.

I am happy to provide advice on specifics, including whether and how to deploy Sahana Eden.

Best Wishes,
Fran.

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[Louiqa Raschid]

Fran, That brings to mind a LOT of memories! IIRC Ramindu had an early GSoC project on internationalization and

would send out a greeting in a different language each week.  Louiqa

[Barış Bozkurt]

Thanks for the reply and stating your support Fran 🙏, 

Our effort is towards helping rehabilitation(also using it for development and testing of the system) and getting prepared for the next event. The reason we are taking action now is that the issue is on the air, the attention will drop in time and no-one will listen to us in a few months. My assumptions are:

- To have a productive talk with the actors, I should first have a good understanding of what tools are available, maintained, tested,.. and possible use cases. That's why I am questioning Sahana-Eden's state.

- Implementing a system is always difficult, requires a dedicated team, resources and time. My communication with the NGOs will target that: consider it as long term dedication, build a team, create resources to support the team. Rehabilitation activities of this event would be the development and testing phase, the next event would be the use phase. 

I'll post updates here if I manage to take steps. My team aims studying available resources for a week and then reaching NGOs to start communications. An optimistic projection would be to start working on the project in 1-2 months time. That could still potentially help many people in the following months.

Best,

Baris

[Louiqa Raschid]

Baris, This is indeed what Fran was advocating as the best protocol to prepare for a disaster scenario.

There are many experts lurking on this list so perhaps share the candidate tools that you are considering

and you may get additional feedback. Louiqa

[Fran Boon]

On Mon, 13 Feb 2023 at 07:24, Louiqa Raschid <lou...@umiacs.umd.edu> wrote:

Sahana Eden is in our radar. I am a bit puzzled while trying to understand if the project is discontinued or not.

It is not very actively developed, but am happy to put in a little time for maintenance as/when required.

Active development only stopped recently so there hasn't yet been any significant ecosystem breakages, although such are inevitable over time...e.g. I just found that the Shapely API is evolving so started throwing up deprecation warnings which would inevitably become breakages in the future...I just fixed these, along with reviving an old Turkey template which could serve as the basis for something.

 

However there isn't a ton of core developer time available to develop a tailored solution for you...can only offer little pieces of advice/support, which I am happy to do if you have a serious deployment afoot.

The tool seems to suit our needs perfectly but I am questioning if it is among the best choice, if I should be checking other resources instead. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

There are no other tools that I am aware of that have anything like the feature set of Sahana Eden...it really depends on what you want to achieve & with what resources.

If it meets some of the needs nearly out of the box, then it's a great solution which can grow/evolve....the ideal is to see it as a toolkit to build the exact tailored solution you need with many power tools available.

However if you have strong developer resources in a different framework and unambitious needs then you may be better off throwing together something simple which your team can maintain/evolve.

F

[Barış Bozkurt]

Thanks a lot Fran,

Your message provided me all I asked for. I will try to meet with NGOs during next weeks (trying reach those can take decisions and push things now). 

All the best,

Baris

[renato barcellos]

Sorry to my English!
I translate with google....sorry

Hello, We here at the Fluminense Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology, close to Rio de Janeiro 230km, have developed an API to integrate the location of teams through the radios used and they are automatically displayed on the Sahana screen. Another API developed was related to the AIS of vessels close to the port in real time. We are in doubt as to whether we will continue with our development for the application of a port in Brazil, as we see that there is no further progress on GitHub. I ask if sahana is being discontinued or no longer used. We are investing heavily in research here at our institution to expand its use in Brazil.

[Fran Boon]

On Thu, 16 Feb 2023 at 13:46, renato barcellos <rgsbar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry to my English!
I translate with google....sorry

No worries, it's clear enough.

 

Hello, We here at the Fluminense Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology, close to Rio de Janeiro 230km, have developed an API to integrate the location of teams through the radios used and they are automatically displayed on the Sahana screen. Another API developed was related to the AIS of vessels close to the port in real time. We are in doubt as to whether we will continue with our development for the application of a port in Brazil, as we see that there is no further progress on GitHub. I ask if sahana is being discontinued or no longer used. We are investing heavily in research here at our institution to expand its use in Brazil.

If you are investing heavily then you should be able to easily make up any shortfall of resource in SSF.

Feel free to send Pull Requests on GitHub for the new features that you are developing, as well as any fixes to keep the ecosystem alive.

If you need more support than that then should look at investing in paying for a core support team, which SSF may be able to help manage.

Best Wishes,
Fran.