About This Book

Everyone can be affected by disasters whether personally or indirectly. Disaster Management professionals are kept busy responding to events of all scales, yet find time to explore the use of more sophisticated toolsets. The Sahana Project was conceived by people on the front lines of the 2004 Sri Lanka tsunami in order to coordinate the rescue efforts. The word "sahana" means "relief" in Sinhala. This has evolved to provide solutions to both prepare for and respond to disasters no matter where they happen.

Sahana Eden is an open source software platform which provides a range of solutions for Disaster Management practioners to help them reduce the impact disasters have on our communities through tracking the needs of the affected populations & coordinating the responding agencies & their resources.

The latest version of this book is available to either read online or order a printed copy from http://bit.ly/sahanaedenbook

Who is this book for ?

This book has been imagined to meet the needs of three kinds of persons: 1) Decision Makers looking for an appropriate solution for disaster management; 2) Deployers who are ready to deploy Sahana Eden; and 3) Developers who are extending Sahana Eden for more specialized solutions or want to contribute to the project. 

Decision Makers

Preparing and planning for crisis and disaster scenarios is an important part of every community. Whether it is at a global, national, regional or local level, leaders who understand the complexities of disaster response make better decisions and can quickly respond to changing situations. Decision Makers should read the "Introduction" section. This content covers the Sahana Eden platform overview, capabilities and selected case studies. This material will help decision makers in strategic planning and give them important insight into the deployment process.

Deployers

Those who are thinking about or who are ready to deploy Sahana Eden should read the "Introduction", "Getting Started" and "Administration" sections.

In order to deploy Sahana Eden, a deployer should be comfortable with the following system administration processes:

• Installation of an operating system (such as Debian Linux)
• Command line usage (for package installation)
• System configuration involving editing of text files 

Developers

Developers should read the entire book as they should have an overview of how the software can be used and will need to maintain their local deployment.

Basic customization doesn't require any more skills than those required for a Deployer, however, more advanced development will require being familiar with or learning the following skills:

• Python
• JavaScript
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)