Cyclone Nargis was a strong tropical cyclone that caused the deadliest natural disaster in the recorded history of Burma (officially known as Myanmar). The cyclone made landfall in the country on 2 May 2008, causing catastrophic destruction and at least 133,000+ fatalities, over 2.5 million internally displaced with tens of thousands still missing and dead. 

Soon after the cyclone hit and it because increasingly evident that the damage to life and property far exceeded initial estimates the ICT4Peace Foundation Chairman, Daniel Stuaffacher, was copied to a spate of emails that included authors from inter-governmental, non-governmental, private business and commercial organisations, academia, former field level practitioners and others on how best to respond to the monumental challenges of information and communications technology provision to support the humanitarian operations. Eric Rasmussen from INSTEDD instigated the discussions. Many voices in the responses were familiar to the ICT4Peace Foundation from interactions in San Diego during the Strong Angel III.  

Internal discussions led to the preparation of a short paper for internal consumption describing the technical, operational and political issues, considerations and possible solutions as they have been proposed in the past with regards to information and communications provisioning in disaster response with emphasis on the Burma experience as it unfolds.

In the interests of disseminating the observations, the Foundation is now releasing this paper to the public.