Addressing the Information Chaos of Cyclone Ditwah
Photo courtesy of DW
The devastation left by Cyclone Ditwah across Sri Lanka was immediate and immense, affecting over a million lives and triggering widespread landslides. Amidst the chaos of rising waters and tragic loss, a parallel crisis emerged – one of information. As official systems struggled to cope, the internet became a sea of decentralised, desperate posts: scattered WhatsApp screenshots, untraceable images and pleas for missing relatives.
It was in this moment of digital disarray that one tech founder, driven by a singular, immediate purpose, decided to build the solution himself. The result, launched in less than two hours, was FloodSupport.org, a single, simple platform that would quickly become the operational backbone for a national community-led rescue effort.
The genesis of FloodSupport.org came not from a planned workshop but from a moment of personal shock. The founder, Ranga Dayawansha, remembers that he was caught in a client meeting in Wattala when the crisis peaked. As family and friends flooded his phone with urgent calls, he realised the seriousness of the situation.
The true catalyst arrived later that night while scrolling through social media. He observed the torrent of unorganised information – people posting pictures and fragmented messages, desperately seeking help. “I thought, this is really not going to work,” he recounts. “Everyone is putting all this random information in social media from many different sources. How can the government or armed forces or anyone help these people when all the information is spread around different platforms?” This moment marked the realisation: the lack of a centralised, actionable structure for communication. Without consolidated data, rescue efforts were fragmented and futile. The solution needed to be immediate and radically simple.
Working from his existing project code, Ranga decided against any complicated planning or brainstorming. He focused on the immediate user experience of someone trapped and in need of rescue. “This should be so simple because anyone should be able to enter the information,” he reasoned. “In a crisis kind of scenario, people don’t have time to deal with hard, complex systems.”
The core objective was pared down to the absolute essential information: who needs help, what they need and where they are. He pushed the simple form live in less than two hours. “My intention was to save at least one person,” he asserts. “That was the only purpose.”
The initial responses were slow but the disaster’s true scale became apparent when he woke up after just two or three hours of sleep. The dashboard showed around 200 SOS requests, representing information for more than 10,000 people.
The site had barely reached the mainstream yet the demand was already overwhelming. The urgent challenge shifted from building a tool to managing a large scale, lifesaving operation.
The success of FloodSupport.org was entirely dependent on a spontaneous, massive surge of community volunteers. Within hours of the site going live, calls started coming in from influential members of the tech and startup ecosystem. Individuals from Generation Alpha, AISSA Association the Startup Sri Lanka community, Spike community and other founders such as Sanjay Alvitigala, Oshadie Korale, Miuli Kalubowila, Arunoda Susiripala and Mohammed Fawaz mobilised immediately to ask how they could help.
The movement escalated rapidly, creating a symbiotic ecosystem.
A WhatsApp group was created to gather and mobilise volunteers. Companies such as Express Jobs and organisations such as HelaKuru, PickMe, Shoutout and WSO2 lent their resources, contacts and technical expertise.
Volunteers, including key figures Aloka Gunasekara, Gayantha De Zoysa, Mohammed Fawaz, Mahendri Hemachandra, Harindu Perera, Nethan Samarathunga and Ginura Bhudhdhima worked continuously to structure the chaos while Sajana Yasas built awareness about the platform on social media channels. The team devised a rigorous process: responses were received, volunteers would call and verify the information (location, needs and number of people) and then pass it to the appropriate authorities.
Shageevan Sachithanandan supported the founder to optimise and scale tech while Sanjaya Elvitigala worked on developing the aid module. Meanwhile, Madura and Umanda initiated a developer community group which gathered over 500 developers, creating a community to support further development of flood support.
Managing operations during an emergency required incredible sensitivity. Ranga notes the essential role of the volunteers in providing hope to flood victims. The collaborative spirit was the driving force. “Within a few hours, thousands of people gathered around it. So then it became a community movement.”
Recognising that a simple web form was insufficient to reach those in the most cutoff areas, the volunteer team innovated quickly. A collaborative effort between the two founders, Tharindu Dassanayake and Mithushan Jalangan, led to the development of a critical extension that enabled anyone to send an SMS to a designated number with the message seamlessly recorded within the FloodSupport system. Their work was further strengthened by the coordinated efforts of Kalana Muthumuni and Aloka Gunasekara, with valuable support from Dialog Ideamart. This innovation played a vital role in overcoming connectivity barriers for individuals without access to the internet or smartphones. Furthermore, community volunteers quickly implemented trilingual support (Sinhala, Tamil and English) to ensure the platform was accessible to every corner of the affected population. Rushdi and Ravith helped to integrate this SMS feature with the DMC to send an official SMS.
Ranga recognised that grassroots efforts needed to be integrated with official structures to maximise impact. “We had to bring all these things to one place,” he emphasises. Through the efforts of volunteers, the system was quickly plugged into the Disaster Management Centre (DMC). This collaboration meant that FloodSupport.org could serve as a centralised, community verified data source for the DMC, ensuring that forces and relief teams were deployed efficiently based on current needs.A group of social media activists were also collecting data by verifying incidents based on help requests and posts about disasters on social media. By the morning of November 28, they were joined by volunteer disaster relief groups including ICERT, Iron Man Team, Life Savers, Round Table, UN IOM and other social media activists and retired and serving military officers. They entered the data they had collected, including new reports on the FloodSupport.org system and re-verifying the information. They would mobilise state and non-state rescue teams to provide support. They also used the system with the District Secretariat in Colombo and the DMC to distribute aid collected at the Wijerama Community Kitchen and flood support center. Ranga highlights that the following individuals played a significant role in these efforts: Yashendra Wijewardana, Sachi Panawala, Nileka Gunawardhana, Nalinda Jayawardhana, Shenu Perera, Nipun Rajapaksha, Dineth Dayal Fonseka, Chameera Jeewantha, Manuri Pabasari, Mayuri de Silva and Sethil Muhandiram.
Today, FloodSupport.org continues to function, managing SOS scenarios and operating an aid site where people can find relief camps and necessary services. The platform is not just a reactive tool; Ranga sees it as a model for future national resilience. He points out that the government often struggles with data scarcity for prediction. Now, with the power of the community, the platform has aggregated crucial real time information. The data can be used to model future flood patterns, predict which areas will be affected by weather forecasts and efficiently deploy rescue forces, making the response significantly more efficient.
The story behind FloodSupport.org is a testament to the power of pure intention and community mobilisation. Despite the enormous damage left by Ditwah, the spirit of community is what endures.
“I’m assuring that this FloodSupport.org is not going to be commercialised. This will be a community effort,” Ranga concludes. “At the end of the day, we all need to save people.”
The platform stands as a robust, resilient model born of crisis, powered by code and sustained by the sheer goodwill of the Sri Lankan community.
