17 October 2005, 20:59
by Fouad Riaz Bajwa

[From: OneWorld South Asia list]

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to inform you that the Sri Lanka's Chamindra de Silva and another volunteer developer are arriving in Islamabad today to deploy Sahana that is a Free and Open Source Software disaster management system that handles missing/displaced persons, camp management, assistance, trading system, etc. These are the lead developers for the same system, which was used in Sri Lanka to coordinate aid for the Tsunami disaster.  

Pakistan Software Export Board, Open Source Resource Centre, International Open Source Network UNDP-IOSN are assisting them to Pakistan. FOSSFP will keep you updated about their visit and sahana deployments.

More information on Sahana:

sahana.sourceforge.net

news.info-share.net

Why Sahana?

• Simple IT solutions can help the relief, recovery and rehabilitative work.
• No solution exists globally; an opportunity to make the Tsunami work in our favour for creating such a solution.
• Starting with a single people database (missing, IDPs, dead, orphans etc.)
• Sahana now has several components.
• Project is now a global open source software project with contributors lining up globally.
• Feedback from people experienced with disaster management and others has been that Sahana is far more advanced than anything available today.

What is Sahana?

• Sahana is a collection of integrated applications which handle an increasing amount of functionality.
• Organization registry: To keep track of various organizations participating and what they do / can do etc.
• Request management system: To allow coordination of how requests from camps and other places are serviced by various organizations.
• Camp registry: Database of camps, including historical information.
• People registry: Database of missing, IDPs, dead, orphans etc. (including pictures, finger prints, DNA samples) with advanced search capabilities
• More function being developed.

Regards.

Fouad Riaz Bajwa

General Secretary

FOSSFP: Free & Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan R

Phone #: 92 (042) 111-923-923 Ext: 27

Cell #: 92-333-4661290

e-mail: bajwa@fossfp.org

Lahore, Pakistan.

URL: www.fossfp.org

Ubuntu-Pakistan

URL: www.ubuntu-pk.org