Implementation of Sahana Disaster Management System during the Mudslide at Southern Leyte Philippines

On February 17, a devastating mudslide killed over 1,800 Filipinos in Guinsaugon in the southern part of Leyte Island in the Philippines. IBM contacted the Sahana core team at the Lanka Software Foundation on February 22 to request the deployment of Sahana.

            Sahana was customized and used to facilitate effective coordination and information-sharing among the National Disaster Coordinating Council member agencies, private sector and civil society groups involved in disaster response, relief and rehabilitation.

 

            Sahana was deployed last 3 March 2006 at St. Bernard, Southern Leyte, by the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) with the technical support of the Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI) of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). It has been deployed in the country to help in the rehabilitation and rebuilding phase for the hapless victims of the mudslide in St. Bernard, Southern Leyte.

            The NDCC and OCD value SAHANA’s contribution to the relief and rehabilitation phases of the Southern Leyte landslides and recognize the tremendous boost for the preparedness for future disasters.

            While SAHANA cannot solve all the problems in a disaster, it was an excellent tool to in creating registries that can provide timely and reliable information on missing persons, donated goods and services, camp locations, and the like. It was the technology that helped many people in a disaster.           

source: 

Sahana: Overview of a Disaster Management
System
Mifan Careem∗, Chamindra De Silva∗, Ravindra De Silva∗, and Louiqa Raschid†, Sanjiva Weerawarana∗
∗ Lanka Software Foundation,Sri Lanka
mifan | chamindra | ravindra | sanjiva @opensource.lk
† University of Maryland
louiqa@umiacs.umd.edu