Project Proposal 

Project Background and Justification

On December 26, 2004 an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 on the Richter scale, off the west coast of Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, triggered massive tsunamis that affected several countries throughout South and Southeast Asia, as well as Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and the Seychelles, in East Africa. In India, the official death toll as of February 8, 2005 is 10,776, with 5,640 missing, and over 112,000 people displaced. The State of Tamil Nadu accounts for over 8,000 dead.

A week after the deadly tsunamis struck the coasts of India, a number of NGOs working on relief efforts in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry gathered to share experiences and to begin to try and coordinate their efforts in order to avoid duplication and to ensure that all affected areas were reached. Several committees of NGOs were formed to coordinate activities in each of the affected districts of Tamil Nadu. These NGOs quickly recognized the need for a centralized information hub, not just for the relief phase, but also for a longer, more resource-intensive phase of reconstruction and development.

The Tsunami Rehabilitation Knowledge Center, an internet-based web portal was born of this need to share information, expertise, and ideas among the various organizations and agencies contributing to the massive tsunami rehabilitation efforts in South India. The process of rebuilding communities and economies following this natural disaster creates an intricate interplay of social, political, psychological, and environmental issues far more complicated than the simple reassembly of physical structures and the replacement of material possessions. Coordination among all participants will produce a more effective rehabilitation and development program. Better information sharing will produce better coordination.

The Tsunami Rehabilitation Knowledge Center will be the central repository of information for the Regional Resource Centers, and for all NGOs who are participating in tsunami reconstruction and development. It is an interactive platform, serving as both a library for data and a forum for communication and collaborative effort. It is a virtual hub for the collection and sharing of knowledge, dissemination of best practices, and development of consensus.

This creation of the knowledge center was undertaken specifically at the direction of the NGOs who are working in coordination roles in the various tsunami-affected districts of South India. The Tsunami Rehabilitation Knowledge Center is still in its development phase and can be viewed presently at its staging site at http://www.ground1.org or at its testing site at http://www.openrun.com.

During the discussion phase of Tsunami Rehabilitation Knowledge Center, it was felt that there is sufficient interest and motivation among all the NGOs to coordinate their activities and their locative data. Most of the groups and individuals have no access to Geographical Information System (GIS) or Mapping technology. In addition, the GIS technologies available for usage are very expensive.

Therefore Janastu proposes to provide an Open Source GIS/Mapping solution that can be used by any organization to GIS-enable their data, add the Open Source GIS/Mapping solution to the Tsunami Rehabilitation Knowledge Center, and train the NGOs on how to use the system and collect the GIS data using a GPS unit.

By providing a single, central location on the web for tsunami reconstruction information, we hope to foster better coordination among the NGOs working in the field, and better coordination between the NGOs and the government, corporate, volunteers, individual donors, and donor agencies.

Many organizations are working on reconstruction — sometimes in concert, sometimes independently. By obtaining a comprehensive understanding of which NGO is working on which projects and in which areas, it is hoped that resources can be shared, efforts can be become collaborative, and duplication can be avoided. The GIS/Mapping system will collect the locative data and the project information from all NGOs working on reconstruction efforts, including frequent status reports, and provide a solution to visualize the data in form of location maps.

Adding the GIS/Mapping solution to the Tsunami Rehabilitation Knowledge Center will showcase its objective along with demonstrating the ease of finding out which NGO, working on which Project and in which areas. The intent is to create transparency and the basis for better coordination among all the parties involve in the relief and the rehabilitation efforts.

There are many different GIS systems commercially available but they are prohibitively expensive. And there are also many good GIS systems in the Open Source arena but they do not have the NGO mapping functionality. So Janastu will not implement a new GIS system, instead we will assemble what's already there in the Open Source world, and interface it with the data being supplied by the various NGO's for the purpose of NGO, project and location mapping.

Once the GIS/Mapping solution is developed, it will be freely available on the Open Source sites like SourceForge.net for any organization to use it. Moreover, any GIS expert and Open Source technology software developer will be able to further customize it and use it for purposes other than the tsunami relief and rehabilitation. For e.g. by collecting a different set of GIS data one can create a location map of all the primary health centers in a region listing the number of doctors and nurses, medical facilities available etc.

Many NGO’s and other agencies working at the grass root level collect data for various purposes, and most of the time the data collected is such that it cannot be mined to get the required information. This leads to the basic problem, which is - a system will be as good as the data collected.

Hence we will train the NGO’s, working on tsunami relief and rehabilitation efforts, on:

• How to collect GIS data using the GPS unit, in format that is required by the system and can be used by the system. 
• How to enter their data into the GIS/Mapping system. 
• How to use the GIS/Mapping system to visualize the data that has been collected.
• All these activities will also ensure that the intended end users of the GIS/Mapping system will help the system grow.

To publicize and sustain our GIS/Mapping solution we will offer training to other Open Source software developers on how to GIS-enable their tools using the system we have developed.

• NGO’s and NPO’s, who are contributing to the tsunami relief and rehabilitation, work in South India as well as other Southeast Asia tsunami-affected areas.
• Volunteers, who want to get involved in the tsunami relief and rehabilitation, work in the South and Southeast Asia.
• Donor and Grantmakers, who want to financially support the tsunami relief and rehabilitation work that is being undertaken by various NGO’s.

The general beneficiaries of this project will be any interested person who wants to know which NGOs is working on which projects and in which areas.

Project sustainability

1. Tsunami Rehabilitation Knowledge Center – The portal website http://www.ground1.org is where the GIS/Mapping solution will be accessible for NGO mapping purpose.

2. Training – Our partner NGO’s and other interested organizations will be trained in using the system and collecting the GIS data, once the GIS/Mapping solution is developed. This will ensure that relevant data is being entered into the system and also that system is being used as intended. Training documentation will be available at our site for any interested party.

3. Open Source system – We believe that GIS/Mapping solution being a freely available Open Source system will be enriched and sustained by other users and communities.

1) An Open Source GIS/Mapping solution into the existing Tsunami Rehabilitation Knowledge Center. This will not only help the NGO’s/NPO’s but also showcase the use of the GIS/Mapping solution.

2) Interface with the agencies collecting tsunami data, teaching them how to collect GIS data required by the system, how to enter their data into the system, and how to use the system to visualize the data that has been collected.

3) Release Open Source GIS/Mapping solution as independent software that can be used by any organization to GIS-enable their data.

There will be two types of training: end-user training to demonstrate how to collect data using the GPS units, how to enter it into the system, and how to use the system to visualize the data in form of location maps.

The second level of training will be developer training to demonstrate to software developers how to GIS-enable their tools using the system we have developed.

Regular monitoring and the evaluation of the project will be done by our partner organizations as listed in the annex 1. The volunteers in our partner organizations will test to ensure the functionality of the GIS/Mapping solution, provide regular feedback reports to Janastu and in our discussion forum group - Pantoto-ground1@lists.sourceforge.net. In addition Janastu testers, will ensure the quality of the software being developed.