Pub Date : 2007-12-01DOI: 10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937401
Rabin K. Patra, J. Pal, S. Nedevschi, M. Plauché, U. Pawar
This paper examines low-cost computing projects for education in developing regions, and presents some of the common entrepreneurial and technical problems faced by past and current initiatives. In particular, we look at various models of computer usage, and evaluate their appropriateness according to their effectiveness in education, their socio-cultural suitability, and economic feasibility. Based on detailed field studies and interviews conducted in rural Indian classrooms and economic analysis, we show that shared rather than single-user devices constitute a more realistic and sustainable approach for low-cost computing projects targeting children's education.
{"title":"Usage models of classroom computing in developing regions","authors":"Rabin K. Patra, J. Pal, S. Nedevschi, M. Plauché, U. Pawar","doi":"10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937401","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines low-cost computing projects for education in developing regions, and presents some of the common entrepreneurial and technical problems faced by past and current initiatives. In particular, we look at various models of computer usage, and evaluate their appropriateness according to their effectiveness in education, their socio-cultural suitability, and economic feasibility. Based on detailed field studies and interviews conducted in rural Indian classrooms and economic analysis, we show that shared rather than single-user devices constitute a more realistic and sustainable approach for low-cost computing projects targeting children's education.","PeriodicalId":299790,"journal":{"name":"2007 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124439884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2007-12-01DOI: 10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937415
David Johnson
This paper evaluates the ability of a low cost wireless mesh network to provide Internet access to a rural area in South Africa with limited broadband connectivity. The network was installed in a mountainous area with a wide range of distances between nodes ranging from long range 5.5 km links to short hops between buildings of only 30 to 50 m. Due to this combination of distances, a mix of unplanned node placement with omni-directional antennas and planned nodes using directional antennas was used. The current network consists of 9 nodes spread over an area of about 15 square kilometers. There is electricity at all the sites but power outages are common, occurring at average intervals of one outage in 7 days, lasting between 3 and 24 hours. The network provides a good service to the satellite based Internet with throughput rates ranging between 300 kbps for 4 hops and 11000 kbps for 1 hop and an average throughput rate of 2324 kbps. The paper evaluates the throughput and delay performance of the OLSR routing protocol being used in the mesh network as well as giving an overview of usage patterns and social behavioural patterns of the users. The users range from first time users in poorer areas of the network to fairly accustomed Internet users in wealthier farming areas.
{"title":"Evaluation of a single radio rural mesh network in South Africa","authors":"David Johnson","doi":"10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937415","url":null,"abstract":"This paper evaluates the ability of a low cost wireless mesh network to provide Internet access to a rural area in South Africa with limited broadband connectivity. The network was installed in a mountainous area with a wide range of distances between nodes ranging from long range 5.5 km links to short hops between buildings of only 30 to 50 m. Due to this combination of distances, a mix of unplanned node placement with omni-directional antennas and planned nodes using directional antennas was used. The current network consists of 9 nodes spread over an area of about 15 square kilometers. There is electricity at all the sites but power outages are common, occurring at average intervals of one outage in 7 days, lasting between 3 and 24 hours. The network provides a good service to the satellite based Internet with throughput rates ranging between 300 kbps for 4 hops and 11000 kbps for 1 hop and an average throughput rate of 2324 kbps. The paper evaluates the throughput and delay performance of the OLSR routing protocol being used in the mesh network as well as giving an overview of usage patterns and social behavioural patterns of the users. The users range from first time users in poorer areas of the network to fairly accustomed Internet users in wealthier farming areas.","PeriodicalId":299790,"journal":{"name":"2007 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development","volume":"244 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132573155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2007-12-01DOI: 10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937405
S. Bhattacharya, A. Basu, D. Samanta
Virtual scanning keyboards are augmentative communication systems used by people with speech and motor impairments. Each of these systems consists of (a) a virtual keyboard and (b) a scanning input method. Designers of these systems need to choose from a large number of design alternatives, which requires evaluating alternate designs. Evaluation of alternate virtual scanning keyboard designs with disabled users is problematic due to the difficulties in (a) getting sufficient number of users for evaluation, particularly in countries like India where social conditions prevent many potential users from participating in the design process and (b) collecting sufficiently large data for analysis due to users' physical disabilities. The problems can be alleviated with the use of model based design methods. In model based design, models of user performance are employed to evaluate designs automatically, thus reducing the need for extensive user testing. Existing performance models of motion impaired users, however, do not consider scanning input methods. This limits the applicability of the existing models to the design of virtual scanning keyboards. To address the limitation, we developed performance models of virtual scanning keyboards. The models are validated by comparing the model predictions with results from user trials. Development and validation of the performance models are described in this paper.
{"title":"Performance models for virtual scanning keyboards: Reducing user involvement in the design","authors":"S. Bhattacharya, A. Basu, D. Samanta","doi":"10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937405","url":null,"abstract":"Virtual scanning keyboards are augmentative communication systems used by people with speech and motor impairments. Each of these systems consists of (a) a virtual keyboard and (b) a scanning input method. Designers of these systems need to choose from a large number of design alternatives, which requires evaluating alternate designs. Evaluation of alternate virtual scanning keyboard designs with disabled users is problematic due to the difficulties in (a) getting sufficient number of users for evaluation, particularly in countries like India where social conditions prevent many potential users from participating in the design process and (b) collecting sufficiently large data for analysis due to users' physical disabilities. The problems can be alleviated with the use of model based design methods. In model based design, models of user performance are employed to evaluate designs automatically, thus reducing the need for extensive user testing. Existing performance models of motion impaired users, however, do not consider scanning input methods. This limits the applicability of the existing models to the design of virtual scanning keyboards. To address the limitation, we developed performance models of virtual scanning keyboards. The models are validated by comparing the model predictions with results from user trials. Development and validation of the performance models are described in this paper.","PeriodicalId":299790,"journal":{"name":"2007 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131205107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2007-12-01DOI: 10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937398
Aishwarya Ratan, S. Bailur
This paper deconstructs the term ldquodevelopmentrdquo in ldquoICT for Developmentrdquo - does it imply welfare or agency? Using a framework of individual capability expansion and social choice theory, we illustrate how these two approaches may conflict, and present a simple model to explore how sometimes the Provider's intention in providing an ICT artifact and the User's ultimate usage differ. We analyze our case studies of Our Voices and Hole in the Office against this and find that the User is likely to gain a tangible, immediate return on using agency-enhancing applications (particularly involving entertainment content), while the impact of welfare-enhancing applications is harder to achieve, given the complex contextual determinants of converting information on ldquopotentialrdquo welfare outcomes to ldquoactualrdquo welfare gains. We recommend further research on the welfare-agency tension, and on assessing paternalism in ldquoICT for developmentrdquo interventions.
本文解构了ldquoICT for development中的ldquodevelopmtrdquo一词——它意味着福利还是机构?使用个人能力扩展和社会选择理论的框架，我们说明了这两种方法是如何冲突的，并提出了一个简单的模型来探讨有时提供者提供ICT工件的意图和用户的最终使用是如何不同的。我们分析了我们的“我们的声音”和“办公室里的洞”案例研究，并发现用户可能会在使用代理增强应用程序(特别是涉及娱乐内容)时获得切实的、即时的回报，而福利增强应用程序的影响则更难实现，因为将有关潜在福利结果的信息转换为实际福利收益的复杂背景决定因素。我们建议进一步研究福利机构之间的紧张关系，以及评估社会发展干预措施中的家长式作风。
{"title":"Welfare, agency and “ICT for Development”","authors":"Aishwarya Ratan, S. Bailur","doi":"10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937398","url":null,"abstract":"This paper deconstructs the term ldquodevelopmentrdquo in ldquoICT for Developmentrdquo - does it imply welfare or agency? Using a framework of individual capability expansion and social choice theory, we illustrate how these two approaches may conflict, and present a simple model to explore how sometimes the Provider's intention in providing an ICT artifact and the User's ultimate usage differ. We analyze our case studies of Our Voices and Hole in the Office against this and find that the User is likely to gain a tangible, immediate return on using agency-enhancing applications (particularly involving entertainment content), while the impact of welfare-enhancing applications is harder to achieve, given the complex contextual determinants of converting information on ldquopotentialrdquo welfare outcomes to ldquoactualrdquo welfare gains. We recommend further research on the welfare-agency tension, and on assessing paternalism in ldquoICT for developmentrdquo interventions.","PeriodicalId":299790,"journal":{"name":"2007 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127679870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2007-12-01DOI: 10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937421
Tapan S. Parikh, Neil Patel, Y. Schwartzman
Smallholder farmers face many challenges competing in the global marketplace. One major constraint is the lack of access to information and communications, which could be used to make decisions and reach new markets. In this paper, drawing from our experiences designing agricultural information systems in India and Central America, we provide a framework for understanding inter-stakeholder communications within agricultural value chains, focusing on the needs of small producers. First, we outline the major types of stakeholders - including farmers, consumers, intermediaries and various supporting organizations. Then, we survey the major categories of information systems supporting communication between stakeholders, focusing on those reaching small farmers. Based on this survey, we provide the following categorization of information flows within agricultural value chains: 1) link-to-link (L2L): those information flows required to coordinate the sale, movement, and distribution of produce along the value chain, 2) peer-to-peer (P2P): communications required to share knowledge and experiences between members of the same stakeholder group, and the expert community serving that stakeholder group and 3) end-to-end (E2E): communications between producers and consumers, for example, to facilitate exchange of non-economic values to be used as external inputs to market pricing (e.g, certification). We outline some reasons why current information systems have had difficulty in reaching small producers, and highlight a few technology trends that could contribute to increasing the fidelity and accessibility of communications, both between producers and consumers, as well as within their respective stakeholder communities.
{"title":"A survey of information systems reaching small producers in global agricultural value chains","authors":"Tapan S. Parikh, Neil Patel, Y. Schwartzman","doi":"10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937421","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937421","url":null,"abstract":"Smallholder farmers face many challenges competing in the global marketplace. One major constraint is the lack of access to information and communications, which could be used to make decisions and reach new markets. In this paper, drawing from our experiences designing agricultural information systems in India and Central America, we provide a framework for understanding inter-stakeholder communications within agricultural value chains, focusing on the needs of small producers. First, we outline the major types of stakeholders - including farmers, consumers, intermediaries and various supporting organizations. Then, we survey the major categories of information systems supporting communication between stakeholders, focusing on those reaching small farmers. Based on this survey, we provide the following categorization of information flows within agricultural value chains: 1) link-to-link (L2L): those information flows required to coordinate the sale, movement, and distribution of produce along the value chain, 2) peer-to-peer (P2P): communications required to share knowledge and experiences between members of the same stakeholder group, and the expert community serving that stakeholder group and 3) end-to-end (E2E): communications between producers and consumers, for example, to facilitate exchange of non-economic values to be used as external inputs to market pricing (e.g, certification). We outline some reasons why current information systems have had difficulty in reaching small producers, and highlight a few technology trends that could contribute to increasing the fidelity and accessibility of communications, both between producers and consumers, as well as within their respective stakeholder communities.","PeriodicalId":299790,"journal":{"name":"2007 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132267977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2007-12-01DOI: 10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937409
Jennifer Bussell
In the last decade many developing country governments made efforts to improve service delivery and access to information through the use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). The character of these efforts, however, varies widely both across and within countries, resulting in continued inequality to access. What incentives influenced the initiation of these projects? How might variation in these incentives have affected the projects themselves? To answer these questions I compare the efforts of sub-national governments in India and South Africa to implement ICT-enabled service centers. In particular I consider what factors led to the implementation of ICT initiatives in urban versus rural areas. I find that politicians use ICT projects to achieve specific electoral goals and thus electoral conditions, specifically the character of political competition and ruling party support bases, can help to explain decisions to implement service centers for rural or urban populations. I use the cases of Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh in India and the Western Cape and Gauteng in South Africa to illustrate this argument.
{"title":"Electoral competition and digital development in India and South Africa","authors":"Jennifer Bussell","doi":"10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937409","url":null,"abstract":"In the last decade many developing country governments made efforts to improve service delivery and access to information through the use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). The character of these efforts, however, varies widely both across and within countries, resulting in continued inequality to access. What incentives influenced the initiation of these projects? How might variation in these incentives have affected the projects themselves? To answer these questions I compare the efforts of sub-national governments in India and South Africa to implement ICT-enabled service centers. In particular I consider what factors led to the implementation of ICT initiatives in urban versus rural areas. I find that politicians use ICT projects to achieve specific electoral goals and thus electoral conditions, specifically the character of political competition and ruling party support bases, can help to explain decisions to implement service centers for rural or urban populations. I use the cases of Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh in India and the Western Cape and Gauteng in South Africa to illustrate this argument.","PeriodicalId":299790,"journal":{"name":"2007 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131403192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2007-12-01DOI: 10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937411
C. Heffernan, Jun Yu
Pro-poor decision-making demands that the communication channels between development actors and the poor are strengthened. However, effective decision-making also requires that the complexities and inter-relationships between household livelihood, demographic, and economic factors are understood. Therefore, the following paper describes the design and implementation of the Poverty Assessor, a software programme to aid practitioners, policy makers and researchers in visualizing the direct poverty impacts of specific livelihood factors and events among populations of poor livestock keepers. The software enables users to profile individuals in relation to the national poverty line in each of the countries involved by selecting from a range of demographic and livelihood indicators. The tool operates by retrieving information from a database derived from the voices of 5,372 poor households in Kenya, India and Bolivia. The paper begins by offering a brief background to the issues involved and the creation of the tool. In the second section, results are presented utilizing examples from the Bolivian study set.
{"title":"Devising neutral tools for development decision-making: The Poverty Assessor","authors":"C. Heffernan, Jun Yu","doi":"10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937411","url":null,"abstract":"Pro-poor decision-making demands that the communication channels between development actors and the poor are strengthened. However, effective decision-making also requires that the complexities and inter-relationships between household livelihood, demographic, and economic factors are understood. Therefore, the following paper describes the design and implementation of the Poverty Assessor, a software programme to aid practitioners, policy makers and researchers in visualizing the direct poverty impacts of specific livelihood factors and events among populations of poor livestock keepers. The software enables users to profile individuals in relation to the national poverty line in each of the countries involved by selecting from a range of demographic and livelihood indicators. The tool operates by retrieving information from a database derived from the voices of 5,372 poor households in Kenya, India and Bolivia. The paper begins by offering a brief background to the issues involved and the creation of the tool. In the second section, results are presented utilizing examples from the Bolivian study set.","PeriodicalId":299790,"journal":{"name":"2007 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132914662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2007-12-01DOI: 10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937412
F. Hussain, Rahul Tongia
Community radio (CR) is a participatory medium and a subset of radio broadcasting. It is an inexpensive and popular way for disseminating content (information, news, entertainment, etc.) CR is designed to increase availability of localized information, media access and empowerment, and even market based growth and societal resource distribution for the community. We examine the sustainability of CR as a tool towards achieving the overall development in the South Asian region. A cross-country comparison of CR in areas including people's participation, regulatory scenarios, human resource development, technology usage trends, financial practices etc. shows a wide variety of CR applications and challenges. An indepth analysis of financial data and practices of several Nepalese CR stations (rural, urban, and semi-urban) alongside regulatory and anecdotal references from India and Bangladesh shows potential viability through advertising and other mechanisms. Even with an advertisement cap of 5 minutes per hour, every station shows the potential of achieving financial sustainability by selling a fraction of the allotted ad time (7%-46%). Our model shows that the monthly operating expenditure of types of stations turns out to be more significant than the annualized capital expenditure. In our analysis (and borne out in the real world), of the three considered stations, the semi-urban station has the highest cost per listener. Stochastic cost modeling of real world CR data show the trend of increased cost for content development is a trade-off for expanding the listener base and transmission time. We conclude with a proposed set of policy and operating recommendations to enable CR to play a significant role in overall South Asian development.
{"title":"Community radio for development in South Asia: A sustainability study","authors":"F. Hussain, Rahul Tongia","doi":"10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937412","url":null,"abstract":"Community radio (CR) is a participatory medium and a subset of radio broadcasting. It is an inexpensive and popular way for disseminating content (information, news, entertainment, etc.) CR is designed to increase availability of localized information, media access and empowerment, and even market based growth and societal resource distribution for the community. We examine the sustainability of CR as a tool towards achieving the overall development in the South Asian region. A cross-country comparison of CR in areas including people's participation, regulatory scenarios, human resource development, technology usage trends, financial practices etc. shows a wide variety of CR applications and challenges. An indepth analysis of financial data and practices of several Nepalese CR stations (rural, urban, and semi-urban) alongside regulatory and anecdotal references from India and Bangladesh shows potential viability through advertising and other mechanisms. Even with an advertisement cap of 5 minutes per hour, every station shows the potential of achieving financial sustainability by selling a fraction of the allotted ad time (7%-46%). Our model shows that the monthly operating expenditure of types of stations turns out to be more significant than the annualized capital expenditure. In our analysis (and borne out in the real world), of the three considered stations, the semi-urban station has the highest cost per listener. Stochastic cost modeling of real world CR data show the trend of increased cost for content development is a trade-off for expanding the listener base and transmission time. We conclude with a proposed set of policy and operating recommendations to enable CR to play a significant role in overall South Asian development.","PeriodicalId":299790,"journal":{"name":"2007 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development","volume":"137 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134113323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2007-12-01DOI: 10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937387
Elizabeth Basha, D. Rus
In developing countries, flooding due to natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes results in massive loss of life and property. Warning communities of the incoming flood provides an effective solution to this by giving people sufficient time to evacuate and protect their property. However, the range of early warning system solutions introduces a tangle of conflicting requirements including cost and reliability, and creates several interesting problems from factors as diverse as technological, social, and political. The complexity of these systems and need for autonomy within the context of a developing country while remaining maintainable and accessible by non-technical personnel provides a challenge not often solved within developed countries, much less the developing. After describing this problem, the paper discusses a proposed solution for the problem, initial experiments in implementing the solution, and lessons learned through that work.
{"title":"Design of early warning flood detection systems for developing countries","authors":"Elizabeth Basha, D. Rus","doi":"10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937387","url":null,"abstract":"In developing countries, flooding due to natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes results in massive loss of life and property. Warning communities of the incoming flood provides an effective solution to this by giving people sufficient time to evacuate and protect their property. However, the range of early warning system solutions introduces a tangle of conflicting requirements including cost and reliability, and creates several interesting problems from factors as diverse as technological, social, and political. The complexity of these systems and need for autonomy within the context of a developing country while remaining maintainable and accessible by non-technical personnel provides a challenge not often solved within developed countries, much less the developing. After describing this problem, the paper discusses a proposed solution for the problem, initial experiments in implementing the solution, and lessons learned through that work.","PeriodicalId":299790,"journal":{"name":"2007 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123997653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2007-12-01DOI: 10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937388
R. Gandhi, R. Veeraraghavan, K. Toyama, Vanaja Ramprasad
Digital green is a research project that seeks to disseminate targeted agricultural information to small and marginal farmers in India using digital video. The unique components of digital green are (1) a participatory process for content production, (2) a locally generated digital video database, (3) human-mediated instruction for dissemination and training, and (4) regimented sequencing to initiate a new community. Unlike some systems that expect information or communication technology alone to deliver useful knowledge to marginal farmers, digital green works with existing, people-based extension systems and aims to amplify their effectiveness. While video provides a point of focus, it is people and social dynamics that ultimately make digital green work. Local social networks are tapped to connect farmers with experts; the thrill of appearing "on TV" motivates farmers; and homophily is exploited to minimize the distance between teacher and learner. In a four-month trial involving 16 villages (1070 households), digital green was seen to increase adoption of certain agriculture practices by a factor of six to seven times over classical person-only agriculture extension. The hardware investment was a TV and a DVD-player per village, and one digital camera and PC shared among all 16 villages. These results are very preliminary, but promising.
{"title":"Digital Green: Participatory video for agricultural extension","authors":"R. Gandhi, R. Veeraraghavan, K. Toyama, Vanaja Ramprasad","doi":"10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTD.2007.4937388","url":null,"abstract":"Digital green is a research project that seeks to disseminate targeted agricultural information to small and marginal farmers in India using digital video. The unique components of digital green are (1) a participatory process for content production, (2) a locally generated digital video database, (3) human-mediated instruction for dissemination and training, and (4) regimented sequencing to initiate a new community. Unlike some systems that expect information or communication technology alone to deliver useful knowledge to marginal farmers, digital green works with existing, people-based extension systems and aims to amplify their effectiveness. While video provides a point of focus, it is people and social dynamics that ultimately make digital green work. Local social networks are tapped to connect farmers with experts; the thrill of appearing \"on TV\" motivates farmers; and homophily is exploited to minimize the distance between teacher and learner. In a four-month trial involving 16 villages (1070 households), digital green was seen to increase adoption of certain agriculture practices by a factor of six to seven times over classical person-only agriculture extension. The hardware investment was a TV and a DVD-player per village, and one digital camera and PC shared among all 16 villages. These results are very preliminary, but promising.","PeriodicalId":299790,"journal":{"name":"2007 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124540494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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