Agile software development for housing reconstruction: the 2017 earthquake case in Mexico

On September 19, 2017 an earthquake occurred in Mexico with epicenter in the limits of the states of Puebla and Morelos. It had a magnitude of 7.1 on the Richter scale. 31,090 homes were affected, of which 1659 with total damage. In order to attend to the contingency, the government of Morelos formed an inter-institutional committee in the first hours to carry out an initial diagnosis of the damage and to provide emergency services. This article presents a case study and lessons learned from the software engineering support for the development of a data-driven platform in the various phases of contingency response: census of damaged homes, identification of aid beneficiaries, determination of aid packages according to a damage assessment, logistics and follow-up of aid package delivery, data-driven decision making, and a public portal for open data and budget transparency.