Tens of billions of dollars are required to rebuild housing in Ukraine damaged as a result of russian military aggression. The Council of Europe initiated a project to help communities rebuild their homes with the help of international donors. The GigaCloud cloud also assisted.

The Council of Europe is a leading organization for the protection of human rights. It has 46 member states, including all members of the European Union. All of them signed the European Convention on Human Rights, a treaty aimed at protecting human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Ukraine joined the Council of Europe in 1995.

Damaged accommodation in Sumy Oblast. Fighting went on in the village from the first days of the russian invasion. Source: Ministry for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine

Task

The Council of Europe Office in Ukraine contributes to the mission of the Council of Europe in the country to protect human rights, support democracy and ensure the rule of law. Currently, the organization is running 18 projects in Ukraine.

After February 24, 2022, the activities of the Ukrainian office were adjusted to new realities. As a result of Russian armed aggression, more than 2.5 million Ukrainians have damaged or completely destroyed housing. Unfortunately, this is not the final data. The primary task of local communities is to estimate the destruction and rebuild housing.

In the summer of 2022, the Council of Europe provided a grant to the All-Ukrainian NGO «Housing Ukraine». The NGO initiated the development of a digital platform for mapping destroyed and damaged housing and its restoration at the community level.

According to the project idea, international donors access the service. With the website functionality, they would be able to help rebuild houses and monitor the recovery process. As a result of the open tender, the IT-Escort company was chosen as the platform developer.

It was decided to develop the platform from the very beginning, taking into account further move to the cloud. Due to constant rocket attacks and power outages, it would be risky to put all the critical information in the server room. After all, if the platform does not work, it means potentially that Ukrainians have not received help and not rebuilt housing.

«With the help of the platform and the information on it, donors or potential donors can understand at what stage of reconstruction this or that house is, which citizen needs financial assistance and in what amount,» says Anastasia Yelina, an employee at the Council of Europe «Internal Displacement in Ukraine: Building Solutions. Phase II» Project.

Housing and cars damaged by russian shelling in the Zhytomyr region. Source: Ministry for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine

Solution

The cloud operator was chosen by the development team. Previously, IT-Escort specialists conducted a market analysis, studied the capabilities of each operator and evaluated their pricing policy. As a result, they decided to cooperate with GigaCloud, which is their partner.

«The platform for the destroyed and damaged housing restoration has in prospect the connection of other territorial communities to it. As a rule, they do not have their own IT infrastructure and specialists to maintain it,» says Kyrylo Romanenko, head of IT-Escort, «From the very beginning, the Council of Europe planned to buy server equipment to host the platform. But given the lack of a room equipped for its installation and specialists with appropriate qualifications who could set it up, the best solution was to deploy the product in the cloud of a reliable service provider in Ukraine. We have been cooperating with GigaCloud for several years and are satisfied with the level of service it provides. That is why this company was chosen as an infrastructure partner».

«Our contract form is single for all member states of the Council of Europe, and we cannot make changes to it as we please. And if we did, the process of agreeing upon the changes with the head office in Strasbourg would take years. We worked closely with GigaCloud's legal and accounting departments. Thanks to the patience and support of these specialists, we found a compromise and were able to sign a contract that satisfied both parties. And now we are cooperating successfully.» ― says Anastasia Yelina.

As part of the project, GigaCloud specialists provided VMware public cloud. Developers deployed a digital platform in it and tuned it up. The operator's specialists advised IT-Escort on cloud infrastructure issues and helped when required.

The platform went online on November 11, 2022. It provides an opportunity to:

• choose an area and a house that suffered from the housing destruction resulted from the russian invasion, and provide assistance;
• prioritize housing assistance based on vulnerability criteria and needs assessment;
• estimate the damage extent;
• keep records of the provided housing assistance;
• see the project of the housing being rebuilt even before the reconstruction is completed.

«This was a pilot of the platform limited to the Ivanovo Territorial Community in the Chernihiv Region. As a result of armed aggression, 1,513 individual residential buildings were damaged on the territory of this community,» says Anastasia Yelina, «We also previously communicated with two communities: Kramatorska and Kryvorizka. Kramatorsk's community is interested in this platform and the possibility of housing reconstruction even in an almost front-line city.»

russian rockets with the housing that is being rebuilt on the back. Source: Ministry for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine

Result

The digital platform helps to administer all stages of destroyed or damaged housing reconstruction, as well as to involve international donor organizations for its restoration. And the GigaCloud public cloud makes support for Ukraine more accessible and gives complete freedom in using the service.

«We had very tight deadlines for the digital platform development. Just one month,» says Kyrylo Romanenko, head of IT-Escort, «Due to the fact that we had experience in building similar solutions, we managed to meet the deadline. We thank GigaCloud for providing us with a free development environment where we ran demos and pilot tests. The Council of Europe plans to actively connect new clients to the platform, and for this it will be necessary to quickly increase resources. The cloud will make it possible to do this without issues.»

In addition to the stable platform operation for the reconstruction of Ukraine, the developers received a number of other advantages from hosting in the cloud:

• Flexible change in the amount of resources.
• Critically important information is reliably protected from various force majeure events.
• The cloud operator's specialists are engaged in maintenance and modernization of the cloud. This guarantees the optimal operation of the infrastructure and allows developers to develop the platform.
• GigaCloud technical support works 24/7 and responds to tickets within 30 minutes.

«If the platform is not updated, donors will not be able to monitor the reconstruction progress,» says Anastasia Yelina, an employee at the Council of Europe «Internal Displacement in Ukraine: Building Solutions. Phase II» Project, «And if it is unavailable for some time, people will lose the opportunity to get help. In either case, its existence simply loses its meaning. We are grateful to the GigaCloud company and IT-Escort for joint efforts in doing a great thing — rebuilding Ukraine.»