13 January 2009

Humanitarian FOSS Project

Here's an interesting group I'd not come across before:

The Humanitarian FOSS Project is a collaborative, community-building project that was started by a group of computing faculty and open source proponents at Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and Connecticut College. Our goal is to build a community of academic computing departments, IT corporations, and local and global humanitarian and community organizations dedicated to building and using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to benefit humanity.

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Our project is part of the growing Humanitarian FOSS Community, a community that was inspired by the Sahana FOSS Disaster Management System, an IT system that was built to aid in the recovery effort following the December 2004 Asian Tsunami. During the past two years, with the help of IT professionals in Sri Lanka and at Accenture Corporation, our students have actively contributed to the Sahana project.

Our approach is not unlike the Habitat for Humanity project: Instead of helping communities build houses, our students help build free software systems that benefit communities. The NSF grant enables us to explore whether engaging students in the Humanitarian-FOSS enterprise will help undergraduates see that designing and building software is an exciting, creative, and (often) a socially beneficial activity.

(Via storming.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

During he December 2004 Asian Tsunami there was mention of a Disaster Management System or a command center on linux, where u just popped in a live cd into an ordinary laptop and u got the system up and the competition was one of those vehicles specifically built.
Have u any idea or link to that project, was just looking for it , in some places its not possible for web apps as of no internet
thanks

Glyn Moody said...

Do you mean Sahana:

http://www.sahana.lk/

Anonymous said...

no , i think Sahana is web based and it was more on the lines of a command centre as to organize , so as not to duplicate and waste valuable resources
During the earthquake a couple of years back in pakistan, the problem was lack of a command centre , there was doubling of efforts in one area and nothing in the other
I had bookmarked the article but lost it in a windows crash