If you're pulling this from Github, you will need a LocalConstants.java file.
This file has a pointer to the project's root directory.

It should be contained in /org/witness/informa/utils/LocalConstants.java and should look a bit like this:

package org.witness.informa.utils;

public class LocalConstants {
  public final static String WEB_ROOT = "/absolute/path/to/repo/";
  public final static String ENGINE_ROOT = "/path/to/engine/root/";
  public final static String USERNAME = "couchdb username";
  public final static String PASSWORD = "couchdb password";
}

You'll also need to have couchdb set up with 4 databases installed: submissions, derivatives, admin, and sources.
Please PUT the corresponding design documents in view_templates into the databases to ready couchdb for use.
Here's an example of how you do that:

curl -X PUT -d @derivatives.json http://username:password@localhost:5984/derivatives/_design/derivatives