Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
order to reduce casualty during pre-disaster preparedness and post-disaster
response phase through free and open source software and open standards.
Powerful data management tools make Sahana Eden more outstanding than
Ushahidi platform. In fact, Sahana Eden supports various modules such as orga-
nization registry, project tracking, human resource, inventory, asset, assessment,
and shelter management and it enables staffs to query or filter any desirable
records. Sahana Eden shows rich visualization capacities, providing an interactive
map with fully fundamental functions to visualize features such as zoom in/out
tools, layers options (enable/disable), and markers changes.
Nevertheless, there is a weakness that needs to be pointed out. Sahana Eden
(end-user version) only shows incidents in term of points on the map. The matter
under consideration is that an earthquake may cause damage to roads and railways,
or a row of houses or a block of flats, which should be better represented as a
polylines and/or polygon. However, Sahana Eden cannot display polygons and
polyline on the map. When showing assets on the map, Sahana Eden only displays
locations of warehouses or sites managing assets, the platform is unable to show
the position of person assigned to use assets on the general map. Let's examine the
following case: an incident I1, we immediately need an ambulance A1 which is
assigned to a person working at incident I2 500 m away from location of I1. The
map would only present three ambulances A2, A3, and A4 located in the ware-
house about 10 km from incident I1 to the emergency response practitioners. Here,
it should be better to show the incident assigned to a person on the map, which
effectively helps in saving time in the short distance.
Lack of geospatial analysis capability found in Sahana Eden, which only
provides a distance measurement tool. In fact, Sahana Eden could become a
perfect platform in disaster management if some geospatial analysis components
could be implemented in the platform and the users do not need for additional tools
and software. Logistics planning is the most in need activity and hence obviously
shortest path analysis will be a helpful tool. Knowing the shortest route to hospitals
could save more lives when large-scale disasters strike and cause numerous
seriously injured victims.
In most emergency responses, helicopters are mobilized in order to transport
victims and provide aid. Hence, the shortest distance to specific features may be
based on a straight-line path, as the crow flies. Nevertheless, once a large-scale
catastrophe occurs and helicopters may be insufficient, ambulances and other
vehicles might be used. In order to indicate the shortest route to specific features
such as hospitals, welfare sites or camps, analysis of destroyed infrastructure is
required and maps of damaged roads must be produced. As a whole, professional
user's satisfaction may be at a high level if some spatial analysis could be
implemented in Sahana Eden.
In developed countries, iPhone and Android applications used in Ushahidi
platform are more common, so it is easier to cope with natural disasters at any
time. However, it is really an obstacle and limitation in developing countries such
as Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines because these high-tech
applications are uncommon and deficient in far-off areas in the countryside. Even
