Publications & Presentations
A selection of peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, conference papers, invited publications, and conference presentations. Full list at Google Sites and SlideShare.
Books
Chapman & Hall / CRC Innovation in Software Engineering · 2011
Co-authored textbook covering open source software development methodologies, community governance, licensing, and enterprise adoption. Published by Chapman & Hall/CRC as part of the Innovations in Software Engineering series.
Journal & Magazine Articles
Oxford Business Review · 2021
Co-authored with Ranusha de Silva. Argues that ESG alignment is not merely a compliance burden but a source of tangible business advantage — lowered TCO, improved scalability, higher employee morale, and stronger stakeholder engagement.
Financial Times Sri Lanka · 2020
Argues that government and election management software should be built as Free and Open Source Software, drawing parallels between democratic principles and open source governance models (meritocracy of doers, transparent decision-making, public auditability).
Communications of the ACM · Vol. 53(12) · December 2010 · pp. 142–149
Documents how an international open source community rapidly coordinated to deploy the Sahana disaster management system in response to humanitarian crises in China, demonstrating FOSS community mobilisation at scale.
Open Source Business Review (OSBR) · December 2010
Introduces and defines the concept of Humanitarian FOSS — the intersection of open source software with humanitarian response — and proposes a framework for HFOSS community development and governance.
Communications of the ACM · Vol. 50(3) · 2007 · pp. 61–65
Examines the application of Free and Open Source Software to disaster management challenges — coordination, data sharing, and interoperability — with lessons from Sahana deployments across multiple countries. One of the earliest academic treatments of FOSS in humanitarian response.
UN & International Organisation Publications
UN APCICT / ESCAP · 2010
Documents the deployment of the Sahana open source disaster management platform in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake, examining lessons on rapid ICT deployment for humanitarian response and interagency coordination.
IDRC · Digital Review of Asia Pacific 2009/2010
Contributed the Sri Lanka chapter to the IDRC's biennial Digital Review of Asia Pacific, covering the state of ICT, open source adoption, and digital development in Sri Lanka.
Conference Papers
UNDP Social Good Summit · 2015
Presented on the day of the UN SDG launch — examines the IPAT equation, gamified mobile SDG engagement models, and how sustainable innovation can be embedded in corporate strategy and online commerce.
ISCRAM 2010 · Seattle, WA · May 2010
The Sahana Software Foundation Response to the 2010 Haiti Earthquake: A New Standard for Free and Open Source Disaster Data Management Systems
Documents the Sahana Software Foundation's multi-agency deployment in response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake — at the time the largest and most complex FOSS humanitarian deployment ever undertaken. Examines coordination across fifteen simultaneous instances, interoperability challenges, and argues for a new standard in open source disaster data management.
Sahana 2009 Conference
Traces the evolution of Sahana from its origins in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami response to a globally deployed open source platform, examining community growth, governance, and technical architecture.
8th Annual International Digital Government Research Conference (DG.O 2007) · pp. 266–267
Demonstration of Sahana: Free and Open Source Disaster Management
Live demonstration paper presenting the Sahana disaster management system to the digital government research community — covering the missing persons registry, shelter management, organisation registry, and request/pledge coordination modules. Situates Sahana as a case study in the intersection of open source software and public administration during crises.
IEEE International Conference on Information and Automation (ICIA) · Sri Lanka · December 2006 · pp. 361–366
First academic paper describing the Sahana system — its origins in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami response, system anatomy, module design, and lessons from early deployments. Examines the alignment between FOSS development culture and the coordination requirements of humanitarian response, and presents Sahana's architecture as a replicable model for open source crisis informatics.
Industry & Trade Publications
Virtusa / Elastic Cloud Economics
White paper on cloud financial management and elastic economics, providing dashboards and frameworks for organisations managing dynamic cloud spend.
TechRepublic / ZDNet
A practical framework for enterprise decision-makers evaluating open source software — covering licensing, community health, support models, security, and total cost of ownership.
Daily Mirror / Daily News Sri Lanka
Open Source Maturity Models
Examines frameworks for evaluating the maturity of open source projects and communities, helping organisations make informed adoption decisions.
PeaceIT — Crisis Management Institute Publication
Defines and contextualises HFOSS as a distinct domain within open source, examining how the humanitarian imperative reshapes community governance, licensing, and software design priorities.
FOSS4Gov Conference Sri Lanka · 2009
A guide to the key open source licence families — permissive, copyleft, and weak copyleft — and their implications for government and enterprise adoption.
Presentations
InnerSource Commons Summit · 2025
Co-presented with Daniel Izquierdo-Cortazar (Bitergia) at the InnerSource Commons Summit. A framework for quantifying InnerSource impact across four dimensions: cost savings through reuse, time-to-market improvement, maintenance cost reduction, and engineering health. Daniel also presented the work at MSR 2025 in Ottawa. Companion to the FINOS InnerSource Value Metrics White Paper.
Social Good Summit · UNDP · New York · September 2015
Presented on the day of the UN SDG launch. Examines the IPAT equation, the challenge of resource scarcity, and how STI embedded in the SDG framework can drive sustainable innovation. Proposes gamified mobile engagement models and argues that STI outside the SDG context can do more harm than good.
AAAI Spring Symposium · Stanford University · March 2015
Traces Sahana's evolution from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami response through three development phases: emergency response, platform rebuild, and the establishment of the Sahana Software Foundation. Covers design principles for disaster scenarios, community governance, and over 20 response deployments across 25+ countries.
ISCRAM Asia · 2014
Examines how open source community coupled with humanitarian community spirit provided strong contributor motivation for building disaster response infrastructure. Covers Sahana's plugin architecture, low-bandwidth design principles, and multi-continent deployments.
IOTX Sahana Camp · June 2014
Overview of the Sahana project's origins, evolution, and global deployments presented at the IOTX Sahana Camp. Covers the establishment of the Sahana Software Foundation as a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit and over 22 disaster response deployments across 25+ countries by 2014.
Sahana Conference · Taipei · July 2010
Traces Sahana's evolution from its origins in the 2004 tsunami through major disaster deployments in Pakistan, Philippines, Indonesia, and China. Examines the transition from crisis-driven development to sustainable governance through a Project Management Committee and the importance of technical standards for emergency system interoperability.
FOSS4Gov Conference · Sri Lanka · September 2009
A guide to software licensing fundamentals for government organisations, comparing proprietary and open source models. Introduces the four freedoms of open source software and surveys major licence families — GPL, LGPL, Apache, BSD, MIT — with guidance for public sector adoption decisions.
ISCRAM 2007 · Delft, Netherlands
One of the earliest academic presentations defining Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software as a domain, using Sahana as the primary case study. Examines how FOSS principles apply to coordination problems in disaster response and what makes humanitarian software distinct from commercial open source.
CTO Conference · Sri Lanka · 2006
Early presentation of the Sahana disaster management system to the CTO community in Sri Lanka, covering the system's origins in the 2004 tsunami response, technical architecture, and the case for open source humanitarian software.