New Governing Body Appointed for Disaster Management Software System - SAHANA
Colombo, Sri Lanka – March 27, 2009
Lanka Software Foundation (LSF) announced today the graduation of Sahana, the disaster management software system developed in the wake of the 2004 South Asian tsunami. A new independent foundation is being set up to take permanent ownership of Sahana and lead its future development.
“We are extremely pleased with the new direction that Sahana has taken. The objective of Lanka Software Foundation is to create real economic impact. With Sahana, LSF has been able to build a thriving ecosystem that has long-term sustainability in the software development industry in Sri Lanka”, said Mano Sekaram, Chairman, Lanka Software Foundation.
In a short span of 4 years Sahana is widely accepted as the global de-facto disaster management software system. It has been deployed in major disasters around the world such as in Pakistan during the Asian Quake, in Indonesia during the Yogjarkata Earthquake and in 3 other disasters that occurred in the Philippines.
As one of the first global free and open source software projects for disaster management, Sahana has received many awards and accolades, including the Global Free Software Foundation (FSF) award for Social Benefit in 2006.
At the LSF and Sahana joint board meeting held earlier this week, it was decided to set up the new Sahana Foundation as a United States 501-C3 non-profit organization with the vision of building and sustaining a global community of open and collaborative ICT for emergency management.
The Sahana board and Project Management Committee members unanimously appointed Brent Woodworth President and CEO at Global Crisis Services, Inc; as the Chairman of the interim Sahana board which will be functional for six months. Dr Sanjiva Weerawarana, the Founder, Director and Chief Scientist was also voted into the Sahana board.
“I am delighted to volunteer my domain knowledge towards the success of Sahana and emergency management. The new Sahana board is extremely excited about this new endevour and feels that this is just the beginning of Sahana's global chapter” said Brent Woodworth, Chairman of Interim Sahana Board. He also stressed that Sahana will always be thankful to Sri Lanka for its beginnings and the name itself is reminiscent of its roots. The chief guest for the event was Prof Tissa Vitharana - the Minister of Science and Technology and the guests' of honor being US Ambassador Robert Blake and Börje Mattsson Chargé d'Affaires of the Swedish Embassy.
A special "Thank You!" was said to all the contributors of Sahana. Certificates were handed over to them as a recognition of their contribution towards the success of Sahana.
A Sahana booklet to commemorate the event was launched and can viewed at
http://www.slideshare.net/TalkSahana/sahana-booklet
For a hardcopy of the booklet, please visit our lab in University of Colombo - School of Computing or call us on +94 -112591785
Blogs on the event
http://thoughtsandideas.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/sahananext/
Video of the event