sahana-nz team mailing list archive

[Tim McNamara <paperless@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,
I have had the pleasure at being a participant of the Open Government Data
Barcamp & Hackfest <http://groups.google.co.nz/group/nzopengovtbarcamp> over
the last two days. I have been thinking of ways and means of using the
knowledge, skills and contacts that I've met over the weekend. The process
has spurred *lots* of ideas. This email is an attempt to collate them, start
some discussion and then some action.

Noting this post is starting threads on a few mailing lists - apologies if
this breaks netiquette and you receive this message more than once. However,
apart from spam - there are some of the domain-specific discussions that it
would be great to get answers to:

*Open Govt Data ppl *> If you have any information that would be useful to
anyone before, during or after an emergency, let us know.
*Humanitarian ICT*  > Please look at the software/hardware & the voice
sections in detail. There must be other people looking at these areas than
Sahana and New Zealand.
*New Zealanders* > Please take a look at the "Sources of Data" most
specifically, and see if you can assist.
*Sahana Hackers* > Any spare capacity to take on some more projects? Take a
look at this list! :D

*All* > Please support the NZ Sahana Cluster's Facebook
page<http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Zealand-Sahana-Cluster/95298371901>,
the more support we have the easier it is to get more support. Funny how
that works.

*Please note: All the user stories are made up. The organisation names are
real, but the situations are not.*


*// Software/Hardware Interaction*
Are there any experts that we know if there are open source software
libraries that allow . Does anyone know anyone that may know?

*PXT* > Anyone know ppl anyone from Telecom NZ, Vodafone NZ or 2degrees that
would be able to work with a small team of software developers to enable
their technology to enable enhanced community response to emergencies?

*User story:*
Luke and Mary are driving home and notice some significant surface flooding.
They would like to send a PXT to their local council to let the authorities
know that something should be done about it.

*Packet Radio*
*User Story:*
Rodney District Council have a wide repeater network in place, but poor
Internet connectivity. They would like to use packet radio to spread
information via their existing emergency resistant communications network.

*Pagers*
User Story:
Manawatu-Wanganui Civil Defence Emergency Management Group have several
staff issued with pagers. They would like to send messages to them via the
web.

(Have left out the obvious iPhone & Android app field, because that side of
things is very sexy right now and probably doesn't need help)



*// Sources of Data*
Does anyone know where this information is available to be used by
organisations deploying Sahana? Where info is available, would anyone like
to help build things to use it?

*Aerial Photography*
If anyone has experience with UMN MapServer <http://mapserver.org/> and
would like to migrate this
dataset<http://cat.open.org.nz/2009/08/29/index-of-new-zealand-transverse-mercator-2000-nztm2000-geo-referenced-orthophotos/>of
New Zealand's aerial photopgraphy for use with Sahana, please get in
touch.
*
*
*Weather*
Are there any local sources of weather information, ideally sourced from
MetService <http://www.metservice.co.nz/public/index.html> /
NIWA<http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate>in the manner of
NOAA <http://www.programmableweb.com/api/noaa-weather-service>'s?
MetConnect<http://metconnect.co.nz/> is
pretty good, but is this information made available as a web service? It's a
pain to have to open up a second web browser for weather information. I know
this information is fee-based, but can we create a capacity for Sahana to
allow people to provide credentials to access that information in its own
Situation Awareness module.

If not, is there anyone who would like to work to create a
Yahoo!<http://developer.yahoo.com/weather/> or
Weather.com <http://www.weather.com/services/xmloap.html> feed reader for
Sahana?

*Infrastructure General - GIS*
Anyone know of a GIS layers infrastructure networks? E.g. gas mains, water
pipes, cell sites, power grid, roading info? I imagine that this information
is currently held in many different areas.  Ideally would like to bundle
these up as part of a NZ-specific Sahana package.

*Infrastructure - Roading Specific*
The NZTA's InfoConnect<https://infoconnect.highwayinfo.govt.nz/opencms/opencms/InfoConnect/project-gallery/>looks
like a great service, enabling websites like
http://maps.aa.co.nz/traffic/roadwatch. Is anyone interested in creating an
open source software library that makes use of the API?
*
*
*Community Infrastructure / Points of Interest*
Would anyone like to take up the challenge of making the
http://nzopengps.org/ maps into the Sahana codebase?



*// Voice*
*Network management*
Use of Sahana as a tool to assist radio network control stations. This would
enable volunteers to log in, assist with the selection of appropriate
frequencies, etc etc. (Kudos to Dan Zubey, from the USA, who has been
working hard to produce this for his local branch of the equivalent of
AREC<http://www.nzart.org.nz/arec/>
)

*Auto Record / Log Radio Messages*
Is is possible to use Radio NZ's software (or some open source solution) to
record voice messages received over UHF/VHF voice as Ogg Vorbis or MP3? This
recorded info information then be archived for future use / review.

Are there any open source voice to text transcription libraries around?



*// Messaging*
*XMPP*
Is there any interest in pillaging an Firefox plugin that is Jabber/XMPP
client and creating a front end to via the Administration module of Sahana
to the XMPP server? (I don't even know if this is technically possible,
advice required!)
*
*
*http://status.net/ (Previously known as Laconica)*
A few of us began work on creating an "Alert" header that a root user
(Incident Controller/Commander in emergency management speak) would be able
to send to all the users of the system. We were using the jQuery and its
AJAX glitter. There's lots of promise to be able to quickly spread
information to all users of a particular Sahana instance and keep tabs on
what's important in other Sahana instances.

*Twitter*
Everyone's in love with Twitter at the moment. Probably because it has a
super-simple API. Sahana should probably extend its Messaging client from
purely SMS & email to this medium. Any takers?


*//Demographic Visualisations*
Kudos to Gordon Anderson.

We can use census data from Statistics NZ to plot the densities of where
older people live, down to meshblock locations. This would be of tremendous
benefit for emergency planning.



Cheers all,

Tim McNamara
  @timClicks
  Sahana Project Management Committee
  New Zealand Sahana Cluster Coordinator