Sahana FOSS Disaster Management System

The Sahana Free and Open Source Disaster Management System is emergency management and disaster preparedness software developed by the Sahana Software Foundation. Conceived during the 2004 Sri Lanka tsunami to help manage the disaster, Sahana software was deployed by the Sri Lankan government's Center of National Operations (CNO), which included the Center of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA). Funding was provided by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). The project has grown, with deployments during other disasters such as the Asian Quake in Pakistan (2005), Southern Leyte Mudslide Disaster in Philippines (2006), the Jogjakarta Earthquake in Indonesia (2006) and the January 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Sahana currently has three projects: Eden, being developed in Python; Agasti, being developed in PHP; and the localization project, L10n.

Functionality

The Sahana project aims to provide a set of modular, web-based disaster management applications.

Sahana (raga)

Sahana (pronounced sahānā) is a popular rāgam (musical scale) in Carnatic music. It is a janya rāgam (derived scale) associated with the 28th Melakarta rāgam Harikambhoji.

Structure and Lakshana

It is a Ubhaya Vakra sampoorna ragam. Vakra means crooked. Ubhaya Vakra means that the notes in both ascent and descent follow a zig zag pattern. The notes in ascending and descending scale do not follow a strict progression. Hence the note phrases contain such vakra phrases, lending a unique beauty to this rāgam. Though it is a sampoorna rāgam (contains all 7 notes), the vakra scale means it is not considered a melakarta, as melakarta rāgams must have strictly ascending and descending scales. It is also classified as a rakti raga (raga with high melodic content).

Its ārohaṇa-avarohaṇa structure (ascending and descending scale) is as follows (see swaras in Carnatic music for details on below notation and terms):

The notes used in this scale are Shadjam, Chathusruthi Rishabham, Antara Gandharam, Suddha Madhyamam, Panchamam, Chathusruthi Dhaivatham and Kaisiki Nishadham.