SAS to aid Pakistan flood relief agency

CARY, NC (Oct. 20, 2010) - SAS is helping the International Organization for Migration (IOM) apply analytics to enhance efforts to help millions left homeless by the worst floods in Pakistan's history.

The floodwaters, likened by the UN Secretary General to "a slow moving tsunami," started in the north of the country in early August, and swept southwards toward the Arabian Sea in a wave of destruction.

IOM provides displaced flood victims with tents, plastic sheets, blankets and household items lost to the floods. It handles incoming flights of aid donations, receives relief items and ensures they clear customs, and works with the government's National Disaster Management Authority alongside more than 40 local and international agencies to distribute aid to people most in need.

To better manage such a large and complex effort, SAS Pakistan and IOM are investigating how SAS' expertise in analytics and data management could help IOM better manage and share data with partner agencies in providing emergency shelter.

"Responding to a large-scale disaster requires more than just the ability to distribute," said Brian Kelly, IOM Head of Emergency and Stabilization Programming. "The humanitarian community needs to understand local markets, evaluate supply chains and digest large amounts of data to make informed decisions. This is what SAS does best, and this is what they are doing for us. SAS' knowledge and technology are helping Pakistan to save lives."

SAS Pakistan is working with IOM, humanitarian and other UN agencies to improve information-sharing across multiple agencies and develop a structured data repository, which can handle such analyses as behavioral trends, forecasting and creating multidimensional views of data.

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