Privacy and Data Considerations
This page provides a high-level discussion of deployment and data-handling considerations. It is informational and should not be treated as legal, regulatory, or compliance advice.
Important notice
Operational and legal requirements vary by jurisdiction, organization type, event context, and deployment model. CrowdCAD is software, and each adopting organization is responsible for evaluating its own obligations.
CrowdCAD content and workflows are informational tooling only and do not constitute medical advice, legal advice, regulatory compliance certification, or emergency-care direction.
Open-source license and liability disclaimer
CrowdCAD is distributed as open-source software under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0). Review the license terms before use, modification, or redistribution.
Read the GNU AGPL v3.0 license
To the fullest extent permitted by law, CrowdCAD is provided "as is" and without warranties of any kind, express or implied. The project contributors and maintainers accept no liability for direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, regulatory, operational, or clinical outcomes arising from use, misuse, configuration, hosting, or interpretation of this software in any context, including medical, emergency-response, educational, volunteer, research, or production environments.
Organizations remain solely responsible for patient-care decisions, clinical oversight, legal/privacy review, security controls, retention policy, and compliance with all applicable laws, standards, and contractual obligations.
Why deployment model matters
Deployment choices may affect where data resides, who administers the environment, how access is controlled, and what governance measures are available.
These factors can materially influence internal privacy review and operational policy decisions.
Choose a deployment path
Both options cover the core CrowdCAD workflow. Lite Mode lowers the barrier to getting started, while self-hosted deployments add shared operations, customization, and organization-managed administration.
Lite Mode
Lite Mode gives teams access to the core CrowdCAD workflow with a faster start and lower technical overhead.
- Available on crowdcad.org: Yes
- Requires your own deployment: No
- Core dispatch workflow: Included
- CrowdCAD server-side storage: Not used for Lite sessions
- Shared events: Not included
- Multiple dispatchers: Not included
- Venue maps: Not included
- Custom venues: Not included
- Interface customization: Not included
- Administrative control: Limited
- Best fit: Teams that want a faster starting point with lower setup overhead, or that want to try out the workflow before managing their own deployment
- Technical overhead: Lower
Self-Hosted
Self-hosting includes the full CrowdCAD workflow with support for shared operations, advanced configuration, and organization-managed administration.
- Available on crowdcad.org: No
- Requires your own deployment: Yes
- Core dispatch workflow: Included
- CrowdCAD server-side storage: Organization-managed
- Shared events: Included
- Multiple dispatchers: Included
- Venue maps: Included
- Custom venues: Included
- Interface customization: Included
- Administrative control: Organization-managed
- Best fit: Teams that need shared operations, deeper customization, and centralized administration
- Technical overhead: Higher
Questions organizations should review internally
- • What information is entered into the system?
- • Where is that information stored?
- • Who can access it and under what controls?
- • How long is it retained and why?
- • What incident, patient, or event documentation requirements apply?
- • What local rules apply to your campus, volunteer, NGO, or medical standby model?
- • Who is responsible for system administration and security review?
Working with local legal, privacy, and security stakeholders
Organizations should involve appropriate internal or external stakeholders when evaluating deployment choices. Coordinated review across operations, legal/privacy, and technical teams usually leads to clearer and safer deployment decisions.
Source documentation
Public-site privacy framing is curated for clarity. The linked source material comes from the project repository and can provide additional context.
View source document (updated 2026-04-10)