BluePrint: Sahana First Response (SAFIRE)

Current Status

Fit-Gap analysis spreadsheet

Available features:

1. Manage and allocate skilled resources (SAR, Engineering, Defense), assets (radios, vehicles, equipment), and track their current location
2. Common Operating Picture with Crisis Mapping (who needs and doing what, when, and where)
3. Approve or Reject asset management, incident reports, situational-reporting, and resource messaging
4. Desktop and Mobile applications to integrate and to server as a publisher and a subscriber
5. Support multiple language message delivery options: HTTP, RSS/Atom, SMS, Email, FTP
6. Incident specific SOP check list

Missing features:

1. manage event type specific work flows pre-populated message templates and messages (field-observation, casualty-illness, situation-information, response-resource, resource-messaging and management-summary reports)
2. input and output ​HXL #Event, ​SITREP and ​RM feeds [2] to serve as an aggregator and a publisher-subscriber
3. digitally sign the messages
4. ​Pictographs for reporting incidents (field and casualty-illness reports)

Introduction

Briefly

Sahana First Response (SaFiRe) is designed to support a Simple Emergency Operation Center (EOC). An EOC could be as simple as a single terminal with a single user (e.g. a Dispatch Station) recording incident reports and dispatching an emergency service. The emergency service might be the maintenance engineering crew of a telecommunications service provider deployed to fix a backup power generator. A Police EOC would utilize for managing field-observation (burglary, accident, dispute) and casualty-illness reports (accident, murder). The Police response and resources allocated to an incident varies upon the scenario. The other extreme is managing a crisis such as an earthquake with many casualties, damages, and losses. All these, whether big or small, require managing a series of activities and sharing information across multiple Agencies with their Incident Command and Control Systems (ICCSs). The problem that SAIFRE is solving is providing a simple crisis and emergency response management system.

Problem

Under a well-developed emergency management system, the Emergency Management Services of a Country should be aware of and should map every significant emergency incident and its response. Sharing such information among multiple agencies with disparate systems can be complicated. Solutions such as WebEOC are hard for small developing nations to finance. ​Silo-ed Organizations and inter-agency rivalry at various levels of a national emergency management system becomes a difficult challenge to integrate.

Solution

FUNCTIONAL SECTION DISCUSSES THE COMPONENTS IN DETAIL

SAFIRE is essentially a Sahana Eden template combining various modules to support the work flows of a simple EOC from incident report inception through a cycle until the situation is contained. Important SAFIRE features:

1. Asset, Fleet, and Staff/Volunteer management are essential for the Sahana knowledge-base to realize the current state of the resources
2. Incident reporting, whether it be the public of a first-responder using social media, email, SMS, of a voice call or the call center recording the incident it would be captured as an event
3. Crisis mapping contributes to the common operating picture and categorical representation of the reports with situation visualization and decision management
4. Able to input and output reports in various formats (JSON, XML, PDF, XSL, SQL) and emergency data exchange standards (EDXL, HXL)
5. Use a combination of voice and data input and output streams for collecting and disseminating situational reports and resource messaging
6. Adaptable to handheld and desktop devices for collecting, processing, and sharing information
7. Generic but flexible to customize to any user's liking; i.e. disaster management, police, civil society, private companies, and NGOs

FUNCTIONAL SECTION DISCUSSES THE COMPONENTS IN DETAIL

Stakeholders

<Who will be the users of the solution?>

• Emergency management is the theme or suite SAFIRE sits in. It can be any organization who would want to manage their emergencies. In general, Police, Fire, Ambulatory, NEOC, DEOC, Telecom, Power, Water. Philippines PDRF would have been an ideal candidate.

<How will stakeholders be affected?>

• Accountability
• Efficiency gains

• Some changes may affect the IRFC RMS? The SAFIRE Sahana Eden Template is independent of IFRC's RMS.

User Stories

Search and Rescue

Two people are reported missing in the national forest area. The Police dispatch the local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) to search and rescue the missing persons. The situation information is updated with the areas covered by the search team. The EOC is able to use the information to determine better strategies.

explosion

A large hazardous material factory explosion is reported to the Call Center. Police, Fire, and Ambulatory Services are dispatched to the scene. The EOC issues a Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear (CBRN) SMS/Cell Broadcast alert targeting the population in and around the location to evacuate the area. EOC coordinates with CBRN Specialists and First-Responders to contain the incident and continues to update the situation-information.

landslide

A small landslide completely covering the road is reported by a driver to the Call Center. The Call Center dispatches the local Road Maintenance Authority and Community Emergency Response Team Members to the scene. EOC issues an Alert for situational-awareness. Now the Transportation Authority knows to temporarily halt the bus service along that route. Health department know not to dispatch any Ambulance along that road in an emergency, instead use alternate routes.

flood rescue

A person stranded on the roof with several other people, escaping from a flash flood, calls the Dispatch Services. The EOC deploys a Search & Rescue team with a boat to rescue the people to safety. The EOC dispatches a second team with warm clothing, food, and a vehicle to transport the victims to a temporary shelter.

utilities

A telecom operator needs to manage their assets (telecom equipment, network, vehicles), engineering staff, and other suppliers. A forest fire destroys a far remote Base Transmission Station (BTS). Firefighters need the telecom services restored for their data feeds. A fire fighter reports the incidents to the telecom operator's hotline. The incident is reported with relevant situation information. The managers decide to dispatch an engineering team to further assess the damage. Based on the initial situation information, the managers derive the required response resource such as fuel, power generator, cleanup crew, antenna, and shelter for equipment. A message is multicast to all the resource suppliers. Those suppliers are dispatched and the logistics and project is managed until the situation is contained and telecoms are restored.

Tropical Cylcone

The First-Responders are dispatched to sweep the area to find any victims as well as assess the damage. The EOC collects the incident reports and begins compiling situation-information reports to plan the required response resource to restore immediate utilities and services. EOC coordinates the critical infrastructure restoration.

Train derailment

A high speed train derailed in a mountainous area. An observer calls in reporting mass number of casualties and several survivors stuck in unsafe carriages. The EOC dispatches local authorities to the scene to assess the situation and provide immediate assistance. After receiving field-observation reports the EOC dispatches other relevant First-Responders to stabilize the train and to rescue the survivors.

Requirements

<Group requirements in subsections, e.g. _{etc.> <​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requirements_analysis requirements> <Identify different types of requirements:>}

Functional

Features in these kind of terms - NOTE WE HAVE ALL of these features already - they 'just' need bringing together into a coherent template which has been tested and documented.

• Crisis Mapping for receiving and visualizing the situation (incidents reported and incident being or are contained)
• Staff/Volunteer Management - Credentials of personnel can be tracked (Skills, Training & Experience) to:
  • remind people when they need to attend refresher training and see where there are gaps in cover that need addressing
  • categorization allows for automatic matching to a resource requirement
• Asset Management - Assets can be tracked through purchase, deployment, loans and repairs.
• Fleet Management - Vehicles can have their:
  • fuel usage monitored and
  • use GPS Tracking to report their current positions
• Incident Reporting - Incidents can be:
  • logged by call centre staff
  • reported from the field by both trusted agents
  • reported by the general public (including through Twitter/SMS/Email)
• Dispatch - Teams of people & their equipment (vehicles/radios/etc) can be assigned to an incident according to their Skills & Availability (Roster)
• Incident Management
  • SOP checklists can be worked through based on scenario templates
  • The Incident Manager can file status updates & request additional resources to be dispatched
  • Crisis map is updated with eachh response action to provide a near real-time common operating picture
• Share Information amongst heterogeneous systems
  • Action requests can be shared with all authorized
  • stakeholders, whether or not they use Sahana (as long as they support open standards such as EDXL)
  • or we would develop a custom adapter

Non-functional

​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-functional_requirements

Interoperability

Standards

HXL

EDXL-SITREP

The module adopts the Situational-Reporting (SITREP) standard. Provides a device independent platform for submit field-observation and casualty-illness reports. Those reports are transformed into situation-information and responses-response reports. SITREP enhanced situational-awareness by offering the same map-based visualization with drill down and filtering features.

EDXL-RM

Resource-Messaging (RM) coordinates the dispatch of response resources to manage the incident. Request for assistance (or resources) is a message that is dispatch to targeted emergency managers or as a broadcast to a geographic area. The relevant emergency response organizations would reply accepting or declining and are then assigned to the incident.

System Constraints

Design

<Where relevant include alternative design options>

Use Case Diagram

Data Model

(e.g. EER or class diagrams)

Workflows

Site Map

<for User Interface solutions>

Wireframes

<for User Interface solutions>

Technologies

Current Implementation

<Leave open for a list of existing implementation of this solution in Sahana Eden:> <*a brief description of the implementation (date/time, name, design options chosen)> <*a link to the code> <*list of deployments of the implementation> <*links to case studies> <*short analysis of achievements/problems>

Planned Implementation

<List of goals for your implementations which you (include your name/github repo/IRC handle) are currently working on>

Future Extensions

<List of features which could be included, but are outside of the scope of this extension>

Outstanding Questions

<Questions about the features or design that haven't been (and need to be) answered>

References

<Links to external resources>