Sahana: soft. free to administer humanitarian aid

sahana it is a "free" system of "disaster management." It is a collaboration tool through the web that allows solving common problems of organization and coordination of humanitarian aid in the event of a major disaster, including the search for missing persons, administration of donations received, volunteers, camps, and coordination between governments, NGOs, volunteers and victims.

Aspirations

sahana is an integrated set of "disaster management" web applications developed in PHP and MySQL that provide solutions to large-scale humanitarian problems after a disaster has occurred.

Their aspirations are as follows:

1. The main one is alleviate human suffering and help save lives through the efficient use of information technologies (ICTs) after a major disaster has occurred.
2. Bring together a diverse group of actors, ranging from the government, emergency management, NGOs, spontaneous volunteers and the victims themselves responding in a more effective way to the needs arising after the disaster.
3. Allow victims and volunteers to help themselves and others.
4. Protect victims' information and reduce opportunities for information abuse.
5. Provide a "free" solution available to anyone who needs it.

The main applications that make up Sahana are:

1. Register of missing persons: helps reduce the trauma of finding missing people.
2. Organization registration: coordinate and balance the distribution of tasks among aid organizations in affected areas and connect aid groups so that they all work together. This is very important because sometimes the person who wants to help ends up causing a problem for the victim due to lack of organization and resources.
3. Order management system: record and track all requests for aid and make donor money effectively help mitigate specific needs, especially the most urgent ones.
4. Camp registration: keep a record of the location and number of victims in the different camps and in the temporary shelters built around the affected area.
5. Volunteer administration: coordinate contact information, skills, tasks and availability of volunteers.
6. Inventory management: keep a record of the location, quantities, and expiration date of perishable goods stored to mitigate the consequences of the disaster.
7. Awareness of the situation: provide a summary of the situation to facilitate decision making.

Where was Sahana used

Sahana was used in the following disasters:

1. Tsunami - Sri Lanka 2005 - Officially used by the Sri Lankan government.
2. AsianQuake - Pakistan 2005 - Officially used by the government of Pakistan.
3. Southern Leyte Mudslide Disaster - Philippines 2006 - Officially used by the government of the Philippines.
4. Sarvodaya - Sri Lanka 2006 - Used by the largest NGO in Sri Lanka.
5. Terre des Hommes - Sri Lanka 2006 - Used with the new Child Protection module
6. Yogjarkata Earthquake - Indonesia 2006 - Used by ACS, urRemote and the Indonesian Whitewater Association and Indonesian Rescue Source.
7. Peru Ica Earthquake - 2007 - Used by the government of Peru
8. Chendu - Shizuan Province Earthquake 2008 - Used by Chendgu Police.

Haiti and Chile 

The Sahana community is currently responding to the disasters in Haiti and Chile. Please visit http://haiti.sahanafoundation.org y http://chile.sahanafoundation.org. Anyone who needs to deploy humanitarian aid in these places can use this wonderful pack of free applications.

Installation

sahana it can run on MS Windows, GNU / Linux, * BSD and Mac OS X. It comes with several forms that make it easy to install.

sahana 0.6.2.2

For users of Windows:

• Portable Apps package that can run from a USB stick
• Installation guide for Windows XP using WAMP

For users Linux:

• tarball
• Installation guide

Others releases:

• Sahana on Launchpad