Sahana: open source and open collaboration for disaster management

Posted on February 18, 2010 by arthit

Sahana is a Free and Open Source Disaster Management system. It is a web based collaboration tool that addresses the common coordination problems during a disaster from finding missing people, managing aid, managing volunteers, tracking camps effectively between Government groups, the civil society (NGOs) and the victims themselves.

Sahana has been selected as a finalist in the SourceForge 2009 Community Choice Awards in the Best Project for Government section. Development of Sahana is supported by Lanka Software Foundation in Sri Lanka.

It has been deployed in many places and situations, including Sri Lanka (tsunami 2005), Pakistan (quake 2005), Philippines (mudslide 2006), Indonesia (quake 2006), and New York City (pre-deployed for coastal storm plan 2007-08).

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Announcement: Camp date changed to May 31-June 5, 2010

Posted on February 17, 2010 by arthit

Due to funding timeframe from our granters, we pushed the date for the Camp forward to May 31-June 5, 2010.

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Location-aware mobile field communications and data collection

Posted on February 4, 2010 by arthit

With its ubiquity and mobility, mobile phone shows high potential in community development.

Open Mobile Consortium reviews GeoChat and JavaROSA:

GeoChat is a flexible open source group communications technology that lets team members interact to maintain shared geospatial awareness of who is doing what where — over any device, on any platform, over any network. GeoChat allows you and your team to stay in touch one another in a variety of ways: over SMS, over email, and on the surface of a map in a web browser.

Examples of GeoChat applications are disease surveillance and community healthcare, with possibility to be used in diaster relief as well (provided that mobile phone network is still working, or being ad-hoc-ly setted up on the site). There’re already several sites in Mekong sub-region that deployed GeoChat for disease surveillance, including Mukdahan-Savannakhet (Thailand-Laos) border area. Technical works on two pilot sites are supported by Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance (MBDS), InSTEDD, and Opendream. InSTEDD also houses an R&D lab in Phnom Penh for regional developments.

Apart from field communications, data collection is essential for fieldwork. JavaROSA, a project of OpenROSA, is an open-source platform for data collection on mobile devices. It is based on the W3C’s XForms standard.

JavaROSA has been designed for a wide and ever increasing variety of applications including taking survey data, following disease management, guiding health workers through treatment protocols at point of care, and collection of longitudinal medical records. JavaROSA’s framework architecture is flexible and modular, allowing the development of wholly new applications with minimal new code.

JavaROSA is being used in a project that support community health workers with their data collection tasks during home visits with patients.

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Themes for 2010

Posted on February 3, 2010 by arthit

Two main themes we are thinking about for this 2010 camp:
1) Open mobile technologies for community communication, public health, and disaster relief; and
2) DIY information activism and citizen journalism.

What do you think?

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Digitalibrary.my

Posted on January 31, 2010 by arthit

Digitalibrary Malaysia – digital archives of significant documents and events on Malaysia, a project of Malaysiakini.com.

The digital archive aims to build an online collection of historical documents, books, photos, publications and personal memoirs that is open to the public in order to build a better understanding of Malaysia’s recent political history, contributing towards a healthy and informed discussion of Malaysia’s political future.

While there’re many national archives which collect lots of historical documents, there’re very few that focus on recent history, say, in the range of 30 years time. National archives or commercial archives run by mainstream media also often neglect materials from grassroots movements. Access to these recent histories of local communities are in many aspects essential to civil society development, nationally and regionally. Citizen journalists will also benefit from availability of such documents for their investigative news reporting.

Civil society organizations could use ICT to archive their materials in a systematic way and made them accessible to the public, enhance the understanding about the issues they concerned.

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WNDW – a fantastic book for everyone who wants to start a community wi-fi

Posted on January 30, 2010 by arthit

Wireless Networking in the Developing World is a free book about designing, implementing, and maintaining low-cost wireless networks. Available in English, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Indonesian, and French. Translations are welcome.

From table of contents: introduction, radio physics, network design, antennas & transmissions lines, networking hardware, security & monitoring, solar power, building an outdoor node, troubleshooting, economic sustainability, with 9 case studies, and 5 appendices. You have everything here to start your own community wireless network.

More free materials on wireless network can be found on WirelessU.

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Public Domain Manifesto

Posted on January 27, 2010 by arthit

The Public Domain Manifesto

The public domain, as we understand it, is the wealth of information that is free from the barriers to access or reuse usually associated with copyright protection, either because it is free from any copyright protection or because the right holders have decided to remove these barriers. It is the raw material from which new knowledge is derived and new cultural works are created.

After decades of measures that have drastically reduced the public domain, typically by extending the terms of protection, it is time to strongly reaffirm how much our societies and economies rely on a vibrant and ever expanding public domain. The role of the public domain, in fact, already crucial in the past, it is even more important today, as the Internet and digital technologies enable us to access, use and re-distribute culture with an ease and a power unforeseeable even just a generation ago. The Public Domain Manifesto aims at reminding citizens and policy-makers of a common wealth that, since it belongs to all, it is often defended by no-one. In a time where we for the first time in history have the tools to enable direct access to most of our shared culture and knowledge it is important that policy makers and citizens strengthen the legal concept that enables free and unrestricted access and reuse.

We invite you to read the Manifesto and sign it, if you wish to show your support. We also invite you to share this site (http://publicdomainmanifesto.org) with your contacts and friends. The Public Domain Manifesto is also on Facebook. Also remember to celebrate the Public Domain Day every year on New Year’s Day.

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Paper Tiger Television: a community TV for social change

Posted on January 25, 2010 by arthit

Paper Tiger has been creating fun, funky, hard-hitting, investigative, compelling and truly alternative media since 1981! The programs produced at PTTV have inspired media-savvy community productions and activism around the world. Our archive includes shows that provide critical analysis of media, educate about the communications industry and highlight issues that are absent from mainstream information sources. Through the distribution of our short documentary programs, media literacy/video production workshops, community screenings and grassroots advocacy, PTTV works to expose and challenge the corporate control of media. Because of the bias and misrepresentation of issues in mainstream media it is critical to include diverse perspectives in the process of making media. PTTV strives to increase awareness of how media can be used to affect social change. A public that can strategically and creatively use the media is necessary for a more equitable and healthy democracy.

Television is still a popular ‘one-way’ medium in many areas of Mekong sub-region. With being a ‘local media,’ a community television could possibly narrowing the distance between audiences and producers, and made it possible for audiences to be producer themselves, speaking what matters to their lives.

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Mekong ICT Camp 2010 detailed information

Posted on January 21, 2010 by arthit

This is a detailed information on Mekong ICT Camp 2010 (updated: 2010.01.13 2010.02.22). It contains backgrounds, outlines, date, venue, information about organizers, and contact details.

If you like to organize a workshop in the camp, please contact us.

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Information Architects

Posted on January 20, 2010 by arthit

iA (Information Architects) is a famous international user experience design agency. Its website provide resources and updates on good web/information design practices.

Information design and user experience are not only keys for a successful campaign, it also improve the organization works and logistics. Thinking about filling a form that just hurt your eyes, use fancy icons that make no sense at all, texts in very bad fonts, these will just slow down and introduce errors to your works.

So think about information architecture. Offline and online.

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