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October 16, 2005 Sahana and Pakistan By sanjiva
Chamindra and Bud left a few hours ago for Pakistan - they are probably in Karachi by now. Over the weekend we worked out what was suitable to be recommended for use in Pakistan from the old Sahana project; see http://www.linux.lk/~chamindra/docs/Sahana-Pakistan.pdf for details. We're being careful not to over-promise anything.
Thanks to Ajith Ranabahu, one of the folks who did a lot of work on the Java parts of Sahana I, Eran Chinthaka, and Sudheera Fernando, one of the developers of Sahana II as well as Chamindra and Bud of course, for pulling a marathon weekend effort to get it all ready to go. In the last second, we had apparently screwed something up while copying it over to the notebook that was going .. luckily Ajith (who was on his way to his hometown Kuliyapitiya to spend the now half-spent long weekend by then) managed to pull over to the side and found the problem!
If they decide to use it we have to pull together a quick volunteer effort to localize it a bit more and to harden a few weak spots. I don't expect we'll have any difficulty finding folks to help!
Yesterday for the first time I had a glimpse at Sahana II. Wow, that's looking really solid .. its too bad its not ready yet! However, the data can be migrated from the old version. As soon as Sahana II comes a bit more of age we'll host it on a public place for people to play with it.
* Posted on: Sun, Oct 16 2005 11:56 PM
October 13, 2005 Sahana and Pakistan By sanjiva
Some of you may recall the disaster management system called Sahana we started building immediately after the tsunami. As I have blogged earlier taht is currently being re-done to be a totally globally reusable disaster management system.
As everyone knows Pakistan is currently suffering from a disaster that is probably not second to the tsunami in terms of human impact. I cannot begin to imagine how painful it must be for those people. My heart goes out to them.
We've been asked by a couple of groups in Pakistan to come over and try to help get Sahana deployed and going to assist in their response. I'm proud to say that Chamindra de Silva and Bud Siddhisena have agreed to go and see what they can do! They're heading off ASAP and hope to be back in a week or so.
However, I have to note that unlike many people who tried to push imaginery software on us during the tsunami, we are not going to push very hard, even though Sahana can be really helpful to them. Hoever, if they don't want to bite we will back off!
Good luck to Chamindra and Bud; safe travels!
Pakistan meets Sahana We managed to catch an early flight at 5AM as opposed to the originally booked 7AM one and make it to the hotel early on. Though we made it to the hotel earlier, Murphy would have us wait for about another hour before we could see the rooms. Nevertheless after seeing the 60 inch plasma TV equipped with 70 odd cable channels, there weren't any hard feelings. The room at the Marriott is very nice and relaxing to be in.
After a very short nap, we were escorted to the IBM office, where we met a lot of new faces. Chamindra presented the current Sahana system and I showed a working demo off one of the notebooks we brought with us. As soon as that meeting was over, we all rushed over to the Priminister's secretariat, which is a massive palace like building just a few meter's off IBM headquarters.
There were several high ranked Army officers to whom we (IBM/LSF) demoed the system and offered other templates and consultancy services Our presentation was taken quite positively by the officials, and they even offered to take the two leading guys from the Emergency Crisis Team on a chopper to see the disaster area.
Later in the evening, quite happy with the day's progress, Asif who is one of the IBMers, took us out to Pizza Hut to initiate eating after fasting all day. We took the special "All you can eat" offer that's happening these days due to the Ramadan season. I must say the quality of the Pizza was better when compared to what you get in Sri Lanka.
The day ended with some coffee and chitchat at a prominent Minister's residence about the current situation. There seems to be a lot of expectations from everyone to get the system operational ASAP. Hopefully all the elements will come together in the coming days.
posted by Bud at 11:31 PM 0 comments
Blogging from Pakistan
I've just arrived at the Pakistan airport in Karachi, trying to kill some time till the next flight at 7AM. Even though my search for wireless networks through kismet came up with 2 unknown essid's that seem to be unencrypted, I wasn't about to go any further with trying to hack into it just so I can get this blog out on time.
My self and Chamindra are in Pakistan on our way to Islamabad to help with the disaster efforts as a result of the Earth quake strike last week. No so much so by picking up shawals or buckets but by what we know best - Free & Opensource software.
I only got to know about our need for the visit on Thursday, when IBM requested us to join their Emergency Crisis Management Team. If your wondering why us, then the simple answer is, for building the Sahana system in a very short time when the Tsunami hit. Unfortunately as we built it very quickly, within a week or so, its far from perfect when it comes to implementing for a world wide disaster solution.
The good news is Sahana phase 2 is in full swing, and is being built by LSF as a generic system that can be use for just about any disaster. Unfotunately the new system is about 2-3 months away from being realized. That's where I come in -- as an architect (literally) of the old system :)
Our mission is to demonstrate the system as a proposition to managing the current crisis in the hope that it can ease some of the chaos and disorder usually found in such a situation.
Enough said about Sahana, my trip here was quite a company. Murphy seemed to have joined us along the way, following us secretly and popping up from time to time. From the setting up of the demo till the last minute to me loosing the ticket coupons while filling the embarkation to the tatty flight that a 1 hour stop over in Mumbai after circling the sky for about 20 minutes due to traffic! If that wasn't dizzy enough, we were forced to stay in the plane, while a cleaning crew tore plane apart. Which brings us to the present, sitting and blogging in an empty airport with another 5 hours to go.
Well I just bought a book -- "The beautiful Mind", and if its anything like the movie then I'd guess it would be a real treat.
Things can only get better....
posted by Bud at 2:30 AM 0 comments ________________________________________________________________________