Sahana: Overview of a Disaster Management System

Large scale disasters bring together a diversity of organizations and produce massive amounts of heterogeneous data that must be managed by these organizations. The lack of effective ICT solutions can lead to a lack of coordination and chaos among these organizations, as they track victims´ needs and respond to the disaster. The result can be delayed or ineffective response, the potential wastage of pledged support, imbalances in aid distribution, and a lack of transparency. ICT solutions to manage disasters can potentially improve efficiency and effectiveness. Sahana is a free and open source software (FOSS) application that aims to be a comprehensive solution for information management in relief operations, recovery and rehabilitation. This paper addresses the alignment between FOSS development and humanitarian applications, it then describes the anatomy of the Sahana system. We follow up with a case study of Sahana deployment and lessons learned.