[Talk-mm] Myanmar Relief Effort - IT infrastructure - Notes from Conference Call #2
Mikel Maron
mikel_maron at yahoo.com
Mon Jun 9 22:04:24 BST 2008
Thanks for collecting these minutes Neil. What do we think about posting these notes to the wiki?
----- Original Message ----
From: Neil Penman <npenman at au1.ibm.com>
To: john.mckenzie at worldvision.com.au; R.Shamir at cfa.vic.gov.au; Richard Rome <rrome at au1.ibm.com>; Terri Pond <terri at itcrisis.com>; Michael A Donahe <donahe at itcrisis.com>; Mark Prutsalis <mark at globaliist.com>; Ian M Steinberg <ians at us.ibm.com>; Rebecca Curzon <rebecca_curzon at us.ibm.com>; Brett Henderson <brethend at au1.ibm.com>; Ian Checkley <icheckle at au1.ibm.com>; eggersrj at gmail.com; Gail Hepworth <hepworth at us.ibm.com>; Barry Pipella <barrypip at au1.ibm.com>; Kenneth M Khouri <khouri at us.ibm.com>
Cc: Christopher Tun <christophertun at gmail.com>; Brett Henderson <brett at bretth.com>; Chamindra De Silva <chamindra at opensource.lk>; Eduardo Jezierski <edjez at instedd.org>; Htain Lin Shwe <htainlinshwe at gmail.com>; THAR HTET <kotharthar at gmail.com>; Daniel Cazzulino <kzu at clariusconsulting.net>; Nyi Lynn Seck ညီလင္းဆက္ <lynnseck at gmail.com>; mifan at opensource.lk; Mifan Careem <mifanc at gmail.com>; Mikel Maron <mikel_maron at yahoo.com>; Nay Linn Than <naylynnthan at gmail.com>; Roshan Hewapathirana <roshanhewapathirana at gmail.com>; Roshan Hewapathirana <roshanhewapathirana at yahoo.com>; Sandro Franchi <sandro at alegua.com.ar>; Ye Myat Thu Mandalay <yemyatthu at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 5, 2008 7:30:56 PM
Subject: Myanmar Relief Effort - IT infrastructure - Notes from Conference Call #2
For these minutes I have taken the notes that Rob Eggers wrote after the
first conference call and added information from the second. The intention
is to inform a fairly wide circle of people about this initiative. These
conference calls have been organised by Christopher Tun to assist the
Myanmar delivery team set up Sahana and OSM while they are in Bangkok.
Please send me any corrections. I've also put a copy of this email as a
word document in case the formatting is lost in transmission.
The Myanmar team is made up of IT professionals affiliated with Myanmar
Egress and the Myanmar Computer Professionals Association (MCPA). They are
working with NGOs inside Myanmar and with the Myanmar government to provide
and coordinate IT resources for the coalition of NGOs responding to the
cyclone. The team has relocated to Bangkok for 5 days until Sunday to get
access to high speed Internet and support. Internet access is available in
Myanmar but has limited capacity.
Notes
The conference call was held Thursday 8am EST (US).
Conference Call Objectives
Provide the Myanmar delivery team with information on Open Street Maps.
Mikel Maron presented an overview of OSM followed by a question and
answer session between the delivery team, Mikel and Brett Henderson (one
of the core OSM developers).
Attendees
Chris Tun
Volunteer from Deloitte-Touche based in California
Born in Burma and with lots of business and family contacts
there
Functioning as a primary lead and facilitator from afar
Indicated some ability to expedite visas and access
christophertun at gmail.com
415-385-6033 (San Jose)
Thaung Su Nyein
Burmese-Australian I think
One of the three-man tech team -- seems to be leading that
little group
Based in Myanmar
Has a web and software development background
thaungsunyein at gmail.com
Ye Myat Thu
Wasn't introduced, but I understand he's one of the three-man
tech team
Based in Myanmar
yemyatthu at gmail.com
Htain Lin Shwe
Part of the Myanmar based team
htainlinshwe at gmail.com
Mikel Maron
Freelance web Consultant based in San Francisco and Brighton UK
Senior developer at Yahoo from 1997 to 2001
Recently conducted workshops over 3 months in Indian
universities on OSM
Is our main contact with the UN FAO and Christopher Tun
mikel_maron at yahoo.com
Ian Checkley
IBM IT Architect based in Melbourne
Involved in OSM and the World Development Initiatve with a
focus on East Africa
icheckle at au1.ibm.com
Rob Eggers
Sahana expert
Recently left IBM and is now running his own IT business
While Rob was at IBM he was sent to Peru to liaise with the
government and help get Sahana up and running after an
earthquake. He was also involved in setting up Sahana to
support the New York City coastal storm plan
eggersrj at gmail.com, eggersrj at yahoo.com
Brett Henderson
IBM IT Architect based in Melbourne
Developer of Osmosis an OSM application for Extracting and
processing bulk GIS data
brethend at au1.ibm.com
Neil Penman
IBM IT Architect based in Melbourne
Has been investigating how IBM can use OSM as part of the World
Development Initiative
npenman at au1.ibm.com
Presentation
Mikel walked through the OSM data gathering process:
Recording GPS logs
Uploading the GPS data into OSM
Tagging the data
Customisation of data (For example the Myanmar team were keen to
record pagodas as these are high visibility landmarks in Myanmar)
Using map data from other sources including both WMS and non WMS
digitised maps
Brett Henderson answered questions on the integration between a local
server in Myanmar and the master OSM database.
Discussion
The Myanmar team indicated that there are 2 Myanmar government
departments working on producing digitised maps of the Myanmar data
and they will be able to access these.
The Myanmar team made a strong request for assistance in Myanmar for
support in OSM and Sahana. They offered to organise visas for all
people on the call.
bandwidth available inside Myanmar from the provinces is low (as low
as 28 kbps).
Next Meeting
Topic: Sahana-MM Session 3: Sahana By Robert Eggers
Date: Saturday, June 7, 2008
Time: 5:00 am, Pacific Daylight Time (GMT -07:00, San Francisco)
Meeting Number: 592 800 952
Meeting Password: sahana
Please click the link below to see more information, or to join the
meeting.
-------------------------------------------------------
To join the online meeting
-------------------------------------------------------
1. Go to
https://freetrial.webex.com/freetrial/j.php?ED=106019367&UID=1019798292&PW=0b772b4b1a1e0245515750
2. Enter your name and email address.
3. Enter the meeting password: sahana
4. Click "Join Now".
Appendix - Additional notes from Rob Eggers minutes of the first conference
call:
a) At this point they seem to have an infrastructure and process design in
mind -- I suspect there may be some scale and execution issues for what
they're talking about, but this was just an introductory discussion not an
implementation planning session:
Localization of Sahana to Burmese is considered generally complete,
but with a few bugs that are being ironed out atm.
*** Their hope is to attempt to provide both English and Burmese at
the resource data level in order to share the system between local
Burmese speakers and international English-speaking NGOs. I don't
believe this going to be a trivial support/implementation item
Central Sahana servers will be hosted at Yangon-HQ -- one for Burmese
gov't and Burmese NGOs, and another for international NGOs (as I
understood)
There will be ~10 remote processing centers at each of the major
townships, each with a small handful of laptops all running their own
installation of Sahana.
Each township hosts ~20 or so NGOs but with little coordinated effort
thus far
Data will be gathered by teams of 4-5 based out of each township,
using some *standard* forms developed during the Tsunami
Data will be entered into the township laptops and then uploaded to
Yangon via IPStar terminals at each of the 10 townships
*** Thaung believes they have all the server/computing hardware they
need to implement their plan. Not sure I agree yet, but worth
noting.
b) They seem to have a requirement that the mapping system work offline as
network connectivity is spotty/limited through the system
c) Best thing going for coordinated data seems to be the UN MIMU system:
http://myanmar.humanitarianinfo.org
d) They're targeting Sahana system launch date of June 15 with whatever
available IPStar uplinks they have at that point.
STAKEHOLDERS:
e) Volunteers and NGOs are the primary system/solution owners for now --
no clear identification of long term support plans as of yet (whether
gov't, NGO, private parties, etc).
f) The team is hopeful they can get Garmin GPS devices from Ian Checkley
(Ian is IBM in Australia -- seems Ian mentioned this might be possible)
with which to track incidents and damage to populate to Sahana, and to help
develop a more complete mapping system.
g) UN-led NGOs and the gov't are two main stakeholders.
h) MCPA does not have any government officers on the executive committee..
(it does have a Professor from a government university).
i) Myanmar Egress is a totally 100% private NGO. Egress does however have
some influential connections, so combined network / connections of MCPA and
Egress are pretty essential to successfully implement this project.
j) Egress has good relationships with both government and UN-led orgs ...
so it's in a unique position to bridge the two sides.
(See attached file: Myanmar Relief Effort - IT infrastructure - Conference
Call #2.doc)
Regards
Neil Penman
IT Architect
Global Business Services
Phone : + 61 -3-864 65703
Mobile: +61 402-975-959
email: npenman at au1.ibm.com
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