Sahana Foundation’s Response to Haiti Earthquake

Sahana Foundation’s Response to Haiti

Earthquake3 July 2010, Sahana Camp

Fran Boonfran@sahanafoundation.org

Tuesday, 12 January 2010

Rapidly-changing requirements• Missing Person Registry• Mapping• Organization Registry• Hospital Management• Volunteer Registry• WFP: Food Request Portal

Missing Person Registry

• We persuaded the response community to standardize on PFIF as a tool for interoperability

• Google provided a multilingual widget for embedding into sites

• US National Library of Medicine built a Sahana front-end called iWall

PFIF

Mapping• High-resolution Satellite Imagery

available quickly (26 hrs)• OpenStreetMap volunteers used this & old

printed maps to quickly cover Port-au-Prince

• These were made available as basemaps on handheld GPS

Mapping

• Texts from people trapped under the rubble were geolocated using these maps

• 1st Responders were given coordinates for where to look & had the GPS basemaps

Organization Registry

• Army of volunteers input data from a multitude of spreadsheets– We had the best data & it was accessible

•Hospital Management– We had the best data & it was accessible– EDXL-HAVE compliant

•Volunteer Management– Built in 48 hours!

Request Management

• ‘Closing the Loop’ for data from:– SMS (4636)– Twitter (Tweak the Tweet)

• Matching Requests with Pledges• RSS feeds provided by these projects

were parsed & put into new UI

Food Requests Portal

• World Food Programme• Implementing Partners request Food

deliveries for their zones• WFP approves & schedules collection

or delivery (with armed escort, where-requested)

• SMS Notifications

Infrastructrure• NetHope & Inveneo• Long-distance WiFi links to provide

connectivity for NGOs & Medical teams.

Making Do

Lost in the Clouds