Emergency recovery
On 28 August 2005, hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, wreaking havoc in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Many areas of New Orleans were flooded and winds of more than 100 mph (160 km/h) tore off parts of the roof of the Superdome stadium where some 9,000 people who were unable or unwilling to leave the city were taking refuge. Power lines were cut, trees felled, shops wrecked, and cars hurled across streets strewn with shattered glass. In the following days, the scale of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding became clearer. About 80% of the low-lying city was under water. Helicopters and boats were picking up survivors stranded on rooftops across the area––many were to spend several more days there. On 1 September, with the lack of any local command and control facility, New Orleans appeared to descend into anarchy, with reports of looting, shootings, carjacking, and rapes. The local police force, reduced in number by 30%, was ordered to focus its efforts on tackling lawlessness. Anger mounted over the delay in getting aid to people in New Orleans and what was seen as an inadequate response from the federal government. In the following days, the relief effort was stepped up. Evacuations continued as military convoys arrived with supplies of food, medicine and water. Finally, on 3 September, more than 10,000 people were removed from New Orleans––the Superdome stadium and the city’s convention center were cleared. The US appealed for international aid, requesting blankets, first aid kits, water trucks, and food. One year later, the scale and costs of the recovery efforts were impressive. FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) has paid out more than $13.2 billion under the National Flood Insurance Policy to policyholders in Louisiana. The US Small Business Administration (SBA) approved more than 13,000 disaster assistance loans to business owners totaling $1.3 billion and 78,237 loans to renters and homeowners totaling more than $5 billion. FEMA issued 1.6 million housing assistance checks totaling more than $3.6 billion to Louisiana victims, in the form of rental assistance and home repair or replacement grants (FEMA News release 1603-516 2006).
On the other side of the planet, aid was badly needed for those countries affected by the 2004 tsunami (mostly Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and India) which had inflicted widespread damage to the infrastructure, leading to a shortage of water and food. Due to the high population density and the tropical climate of the region, epidemics were a special concern and bringing in sanitation facilities and fresh drinking water as soon as possible was an absolute priority. In the days and weeks following the tsunami, governments all over the world committed to more than $7 billion in aid for the affected countries, followed by donations from large companies and many smaller local private initiatives.
No matter how impressive the scope of the final efforts, Katrina demonstrated what happens when local command and control systems are lost and no realistic and workable plans exist for integration between the city, state, federal, and private sector response capabilities. The international response to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami was nothing less than chaotic in the most crucial first days following the disaster. When disasters become large in scale all the limitations resulting from a lack of integration and collaboration among all the involved organizations begin to expose themselves and further compound the negative consequences of the event. Often in large-scale disasters the people who must work together have no history of doing so, they have not developed a trust or understanding of one another’s abilities, and the totality of resources they each bring to bear were never before exercised. While a new organization is stumbling around trying to form itself into something that will work, the disaster does not wait for them.
Emergency recovery following major disasters: humanitarian information systems
In times of major disasters such as hurricane Katrina or the 2004 tsunami, the need for accurate and timely information is as crucial as is rapid and coherent coordination among the international humanitarian community (Bui and Sankaran 2001; Currion 2006). Effective humanitarian information systems that provide timely access to comprehensive, relevant, and reliable information are critical to humanitarian operations. The faster the humanitarian community is able to collect, analyze, disseminate and act on key information, the more effective the response will, the better needs will be met, and the greater the benefit to affected populations. In 2005 ECHO, the European Commission Directorate-General for Humanitarian Aid, announced its decision to approve a total amount of 4 million Euros to support and enhance humanitarian information systems essential to the coordination of humanitarian assistance (ECHO 2005). Specifically, it was decided to improve information management systems and services of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). OCHA was established in 1991 with a specific mandate to work with operational relief agencies to ensure that there are no gaps in the response and that duplication of effort is avoided. OCHA’s information management extends from the gathering and collection of information and data, to its integration, analysis, synthesis, and dissemination via the Internet and other means.
To respond to information needs, OCHA has developed humanitarian information systems which include ReliefWeb, the regional information networks (IRIN), information management units (IMUs) and humanitarian information centers (HICs). These services have established solid reputations in the provision of quality information and are recognized as essential in the coordination of emergency response among partners in the humanitarian community. Common in the success of these systems, or information services, is that the information provided is based upon a solid information exchange network among all partners in the humanitarian community. ReliefWeb (http://www.reliefweb.int) is the world’s leading online gateway to information on humanitarian emergencies and disasters. Through ReliefWeb, OCHA provides practitioners with information on both complex emergencies and natural disasters worldwide from over 1,000 sources, including UN, governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the academic community, and the media. ReliefWeb consolidates final reports, documents, and reports from humanitarian partners, providing a global repository one-stop shop for emergency response information. IRINs gather information from a range of humanitarian and other sources, providing context and reporting on emergencies and at-risk countries. IMUs and HICs collect, manage, and disseminate operational data and information at the field level, providing geographic information products and a range of operations databases and related content to decision makers in the field as well as headquarters. Other OCHA humanitarian information systems that provide complementary information services to meet the full range of information needs as described above include OCHA Online, the Financial Tracking System (FTS), and the Global Disaster Alert System (GDAS).
In the US, the Humanitarian Information Unit (HIU) was created in 2002 by Secretary of State Powell as “a U.S. Government interagency nucleus to identify, collect, analyze and disseminate unclassified information critical to USG preparations for and responses to humanitarian emergencies worldwide.” In 2004, the task “to promote best practices for humanitarian information management” was added to the HIU’s mission statement. The role of the HIU is to provide critical and reliable information quickly and efficiently to US government organizations involved in providing humanitarian assistance in response to disasters and emergencies overseas. The HIU has developed products for the Secretary of State, the administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Security Council. These products are almost always created to be unclassified, so that they can be shared easily with other audiences within the international humanitarian community: the UN, NGOs, the media, the public, etc. Another role of the HIU is to develop, test, and promote new technologies for better humanitarian information management. The HIU has been in the forefront of using and promoting geographic information systems (GISw) and satellite imagery, both for strategic and operational uses and applications. In addition, the HIU has tested and promoted the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs), global positioning systems (GPSs), and digital cameras on humanitarian field assessments. The HIU has also used collaboration tools and content management software to improve interagency collaboration and information sharing. VISTA is an example of a new web-based visualization tool that not only provides situational awareness, but facilitates humanitarian situational analysis as well (King 2006).
The Sahana open-source humanitarian information and decision support system
Sahana is a web-based collaboration tool that addresses the common coordination problems during a disaster from finding missing people, managing aid, managing volunteers, tracking relocation sites, etc. between government groups, the civil society (NGOs), and the victims themselves. Sahana is an integrated set of pluggable, web-based disaster management applications that provide solutions to large-scale humanitarian problems in the aftermath of a disaster. The main applications and problems they address are as follows:
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Missing person registry: helping to reduce trauma by effectively finding missing persons;
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Organization registry: coordinating and balancing the distribution of relief organizations in the affected areas and connecting relief groups, allowing them to operate as one;
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Request management system: registering and tracking all incoming requests for support and relief up to fulfillment and helping donors connect to relief requirements;
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Camp registry: tracking the location and numbers of victims in the various camps and temporary shelters set up all around the affected area.
The development of Sahana, a free and open-source disaster management system distributed under terms of the GNU lesser general public license, was triggered by the tsunami disaster in 2004 to help coordinate the relief effort in Sri Lanka (Sahana Wiki Community 2006). It was initially built by a group of volunteers from the Sri Lankan information technology (IT) industry and spearheaded by the Lanka Software Foundation. An implementation of Sahana was authorized and deployed by CNO (the main government body in Sri Lanka coordinating the relief effort) to help coordinate all the data being captured. Development of Sahana continues today to make the system applicable for global use and to be able to handle any large-scale disaster. Sahana has been deployed successfully in the aftermath of several large natural disasters, for instance following the large earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, and the mudslide disaster in the Philippines and the Yogjakarta earthquake, both in 2006. The long term objectives of Sahana are to grow into a complete disaster management system, including functionality for mitigation, preparation, relief, and recovery. The current status, ongoing development, and future goals are intensively discussed in two web-based communities, the Sahana Wiki pages (Sahana Wiki Community 2006) and the Humanitarian-ICT Yahoo! Group (Humanitarian-ICT 2006).