Laser technology to level farm land saves water and energy

Dharini Parthasarathy at the Thomson Reuters Foundation: Life in rural India evokes an image of a farmer levelling the land with an ox-drawn scraper. It’s one of the most basic preparations before sowing, as uneven land does not bode well for water absorption and farm productivity.

But for many farmers, animal power is being replaced by machines. A laser land leveller - a machine equipped with a laser-operated drag bucket - is much more effective and quicker at ensuring a flat, even surface. A flat surface means irrigation water reaches every part of the field with minimal waste from run-off or water-logging.

Mechanisation is good news for farmers, as climate change and variability pose unprecedented challenges to agriculture. The need of the hour is climate-smart agriculture practices and technologies that save on scarce resources like water and energy but increase yields and incomes.

A portfolio of climate-smart practices can equip farmers to adapt to changing weather patterns amid depleting natural resources. For instance, groundwater in north-western India has been declining at alarming rates due to the overuse of electric pumps, largely thanks to subsidised electricity, and inadequate recharge from erratic rainfall....

The Bhakra Main Channel in the Punjab, shot by Zerit, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Press 4 for fertilizer - M-farming in Ethiopia

IRIN: One reason farmers in Africa mostly produce so much less than those in other parts of the world is that they have limited access to the technical knowledge and practical tips that can significantly increase yields. But as the continent becomes increasingly wired, this information deficit is narrowing.

While there are other factors, such as poor infrastructure and low access to credit and markets, that have helped keep average yields in Africa largely unchanged since the 1960s, detailed and speedily-delivered information is now increasingly recognized as an essential part of bringing agricultural production levels closer to their full potential.

In Ethiopia, which already has one of the most extensive systems in the world for educating the 85 percent of the population who work the land for a living, this recognition has driven the development of a multilingual mobile phone-based resource centre.

The hotline, operated by the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, and Ethio Telecom, and created by the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), has proved a huge hit. Since its July launch and still in its pilot phase, more than three million farmers in the regions of Amhara, Oromia, Tigray and the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (SNNPR) have punched 8028 on their mobiles to access the system, which uses both interactive voice response (IVR) and SMS technology....

Image by Mmckinley, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

What do Google searches tell us about our climate change fears?

A press release from Springer: Republicans search the Net for information about the weather, climate change and global warming during extremely hot or cold spells. Democrats google these terms when they experience changes in the average temperatures. These are some of the surprising findings from a study by Corey Lang of the University of Rhode Island in the US, published in Springer’s journal Climatic Change. He tracked how the temperature fluctuations and rainfall that Americans experience daily in their own cities make them scour the Internet in search of information about climate change and global warming. To do so, he used data from Google Trends, local weather stations and election results.

Google Trends aggregates all Google searches that are made, and measures how popular a specific search term is. Users can fine tune this to be specific to a particular place (such as a country or city) and time (such as monthly or on a specific date). Lang specifically checked how often, when and where citizens in 205 cities in the US used the search terms “global warming,” “climate change” and “weather.” The terms “drought” and “flood” were also included because increases in these natural phenomena are important predicted impacts of climate change. Monthly statistics were collected for the period from January 2004 to May 2013. Lang then matched them with local weather station data, as well as the 2008 presidential election results in Dave Leip’s “Atlas of Presidential Elections.”

Lang found that search activity increased when extreme heat was felt in summer, when no rain fell over extended periods, and when there were fewer extreme cold snaps in winter. Such weather fluctuations are consistent with projected climate change. Interestingly though, searches also increased when average winter and spring temperatures dropped – events that are inconsistent with global warming. Lang believes this could mean that people who observe unusual extreme weather conditions are genuinely interested in learning more about climate change. It could, however, also mean that deniers, who experience an unusually cool winter, go online to confirm their skeptical views that the world is not really growing warmer.

People from varying political and educational backgrounds reach for their devices at different times to check out information on climate change. Republicans and people from less educated areas do more relevant searches during periods of extreme temperatures, while Democrats and residents of well-educated areas do so when they experience changes in average temperatures.

“Weather fluctuations have an impact on climate change related search behavior, however not always in ways that are consistent with the impacts of climate change. And the research suggests that different types of people experience weather differently or have different perceptions about what type of weather defines climate change, ” concludes Lang....

This rendition of Google's logo by Nyshita talluri, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Researchers use “big data” to track zoonotic diseases

John Maday in Dairy Herd Management: About 60 percent of diseases are zoonotic, or can pass between humans and various animal species, and understanding the pathways and complex relationships between pathogens, hosts and environmental factors is key to improving control strategies.

To untangle some of those relationships, researchers at the University of Liverpool in England are developing the Enhanced Infectious Diseases (EID2) database with funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

According to an article from the BBSRC, the researchers realized there was a vast amount of disease data available in scientific literature and pre-existing databases. They decided to use a “big data” approach, utilizing advanced computer technology to mine and aggregate data for application in disease modeling.

Using this approach, the researchers have built a database team member and epidemiologist Dr. Marie McIntyre, says is “matchless in scale, and has the capacity to hold data on all known human and animal pathogens, when detailed information becomes available." The database has been used in efforts to trace the history of human and animal diseases, predict the
effects of climate change on pathogens, produce maps of which diseases are most likely in some areas and categorize the complex relationships between human and animal carriers and hosts of numerous pathogens. The database is open-access for registered researchers, who can manipulate and organize the data to suit their research goals....

A diary herd in Bodalla, Australia, from the Powerhouse Museum

Mobile data helps Tanzanian herders get ahead of markets, weather

Kizito Makoye in the Thomson Reuters Foundation: Tanzania has devised a new system to help pastoralists and cattle traders track real-time market information on livestock, while keeping them abreast of weather conditions likely to affect their animals’ wellbeing.

The system allows livestock dealers to monitor prices and volumes in markets across the country, while being alerted to the onset of drought and diseases that could affect herds. The Livestock Information Knowledge System (LINKS) is an online platform that uses global positioning system (GPS) technology, text messaging and web-based computer analysis, providing information to pastoralists via mobile phones or the internet.

 “We decided to establish this system because we value the contribution of pastoralists to our economy. However, more education is needed to enable them to make better use of (it),” said
Saning’o Ole Telele, Tanzania’s deputy minister for livestock development and fisheries.

The project was launched in 2013, and so far 53 out of 369 cattle markets have been connected to the system, with a target of covering them all. Changes in trade patterns and market trends allow LINKS to identify and provide early warning of critical food shortages for animals, deteriorating grazing conditions and disease outbreaks.

The system - which is funded and run by the Tanzanian government in partnership with the United States Development Agency, USAID - monitors major domestic livestock, including cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys and horses....

A Tanzanian pastoralist leading livestock into the Ngorongoro Caldera for grazing, shot by Harvey Barrison, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Quick start and challenges for UN’s tech transfer body

Jan Piotrowski in SciDev.net: The “lightning speed” with which a UN-led initiative to transfer technologies for tackling climate change to developing nations has been set up is impressive, but remaining challenges could prevent its success, a member of its advisory board says.

Difficulties in encouraging applications for technological assistance and concern about finding enough partners to build a viable international network of expertise were two issues raised at the third advisory board meeting of the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) in Copenhagen, Denmark, last month (19-21 March), says Heleen de Coninck.

The associate professor of innovation studies and sustainability at the Netherlands’ Radboud University Nijmegen and outgoing board member credits the CTCN’s relative autonomy from UN bodies for its rapid progress. It is now up and running with US$35 million of funding just over a year since it was approved at the UN climate change conference in Doha in late 2012. “This has been set up at lightning speed for the UN. Everyone is admiring how quickly it has been achieved,” she tells SciDev.Net.

Under the auspices of the UN Environment Programme, the CTCN aims to provide developing nations with climate-related technology transfer and capacity building through the shared expertise of its 11 core research institutes and a wider network of partners.

After a planning phase, the network opened for applications for assistance in February. Several have now been received, including a request from Chile for expert assistance in setting up a biodiversity monitoring system, says de Coninck....

Food on a conveyor belt in Seoul, shot by Daderot, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication 

Indonesia: New disaster management software released worldwide

A press release from the World Bank: A new version of software that can predict the social and human impact of natural disasters was released in Indonesia on 7 April 2014. Dr Syamsul Maarif, the Head of Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), launched the updated version of InaSAFE 2.0, software tool jointly developed by BNPB, Australia and the World Bank.

Dr Maarif said that the InaSAFE tools will help improve disaster preparedness in Indonesia by providing a new way to combine scientific hazard information and community knowledge on disaster risk. “It enables production of realistic natural hazard impact scenarios for better planning, preparedness and response training activities, by incorporating a range of natural hazard information, such as earthquake, volcanoes, tsunami or flood; and exposure data, such as the spatial distribution of population, roads or critical infrastructure,” Dr Maarif said.

Australia’s Minister-Counsellor for Development Cooperation in Indonesia, Jean-Bernard Carrasco, said InaSAFE 2.0 includes the ability to work with road data, including a capability to download roads maps directly from the online mapping tool OpenStreetMap (OSM). The new functions could help when planning possible evacuation and emergency response routes.

“With the help of Australian Government agency Geoscience Australia and the Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction, over 1.3 million buildings in Indonesia have already been mapped in OSM and this data is being incorporated into InaSAFE”, Mr Carrasco said.

The updated software is compatible with the free and open source Geographic Information System QGIS 2.0, and allows users to import spatial data from remote sources and create custom impact map templates....

Training teachers of Pune University (in India, not Indonesia) in disaster management, shot by Kumarrakajee, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Text messages aim to save lives in flood-prone Africa

Space Daily via AFP: Text messaging may be dying out as a means of communication in many parts of the advanced world, but it may yet prove to be a vital life-saver in flood-prone African villages.

An early-warning system that aims to capitalise on the explosive growth of mobile phone penetration in Africa could soon be in place to broadcast alerts to all users at risk from natural disasters such as flooding or hurricanes.

Millions of people in Africa have only limited access to television, radio or Internet but mobile phone ownership has grown exponentially, even in poor remote villages at risk from floods.

Now Spain's Nvia, a mobile phone company, has developed the Gooard project, a technology based on geo-targeted alerts that sends text messages to a specific geographical area.

A network of satellites and weather stations will detect the threat and send a text to villagers within 15 minutes, hopefully allowing time for evacuation....

The Limpopo River in flood in Mozambique, US Defense Department photo

New field guide explores open data innovations in disaster risk and resilience

A press release from the World Bank: From Indonesia to Bangladesh to Nepal, community members armed with smartphones and GPS systems are contributing to some of the most extensive and versatile maps ever created, helping inform policy and better prepare their communities for disaster risk.

In Jakarta, more than 500 community members have been trained to collect data on thousands of hospitals, schools, private buildings, and critical infrastructure. In Sri Lanka, government and academic volunteers mapped over 30,000 buildings and 450 km of roadways using a collaborative online resource called OpenStreetMaps.

These are just a few of the projects that have been catalyzed by the Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI), developed by the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR). Launched in 2011, OpenDRI is active in more than 20 countries today, mapping tens of thousands of buildings and urban infrastructure, providing more than 1,000 geospatial datasets to the public, and developing innovative application tools.

To expand this work, the World Bank Group has launched the OpenDRI Field Guide as a showcase of successful projects and a practical guide for governments and other organizations to shape their own open data programs.

“Economic losses from natural disasters have risen from $50 billion each year in the 1980s to just under $200 billion each year in the last decade; about three-quarters of those losses are a result of extreme weather,” said Rachel Kyte, World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change, who launched the guide at a Climate Data Initiative event in Washington. “This field guide will enable our many partners to better incorporate the values of the open data community into their efforts to build climate and disaster resilience.”...

Early-warning system for health risks

A press release from Fraunhofer: That environmental factors affect health is neither unknown nor new. But how are the two actually connected? How can predictions be better used to avoid, for example epidemics by initiating countermeasures on time? In the EU project EO2HEAVEN researchers aimed to answer exactly those questions. The IT architecture for evaluating and correlating data was provided by Dr. Kym Watson and his team at the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB in Karlsruhe. The scientists will present the system concept at CeBIT at the Fraunhofer stand in Hall 9.

In the future, sensors, data and risk analysis should provide hospitals and health authorities with timely decision support in the event of an impending health threat. Graphics: Stefan Riel; photo: Jerzy Sawluk | pixelio.

Within this project three case studies were examined: In Dresden the relationship between air quality – measured in terms of temperature, particulate matter and ozone – and cardiovascular disease; in the South African city of Durban the relationship between air pollution in an industrial area and asthma; and in Uganda the influence of various environmental factors on cholera outbreaks. To this end the researchers at the IOSB developed a software architecture for early warning systems that correlates the environmental and health data and represents it in graphical form. “This allowed us for the first time to visualize the relationships between these factors on risk maps to create a better understanding of the complex environment-health nexus,” explains project coordinator Dr. Kym Watson.

...In the long term it is conceivable, for example, that asthmatics could create their own personal profile in an app. Kym Watson explains the principle: “Users can define the thresholds above which they haven an allergic reaction to pollen or poor air quality. The user can view his / her personal risk map that relates these thresholds to measured or forecasted environmental data. The app could even warn the user when a limit value is or is likely to be exceeded. ”....

Sometimes I'm stumped for an illustration. That's when a green dragon comes in handy. Image by  Bastianow. Version without border of coat of arms: Bedwyr., public domain

Project targets common humanitarian data collection

Jan Piotrowski in SciDev.net: Creating a common standard for humanitarian data collection and a shared database or catalogue will be the dual focus of a UN-led project, the Humanitarian eXchange Language (HXL) initiative, whose working group met for the first time last week (20 January).

The year-long project, which is run by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, received funding from the Humanitarian Innovation Fund in November.

By producing guidelines on data type and format, as well as collection methods, the initiative will allow the direct comparison of information from different humanitarian organisations, says David Megginson, head of HXL’s standards efforts.

While standards on how to deliver humanitarian aid exist, the field lacks a coherent system for data management, both in terms of its collection and storage, he tells SciDev.Net. “The problem is there is huge, duplicated effort in data collection and, a few years after the crisis, the information has disappeared,” he says.

HXL’s working group, consisting of representatives of various NGOs and UN and national development agencies, decided to focus on “high-value indicators” that can be compared between different organisations and have a big impact on crisis response efforts, says Megginson....

Oxfam health workers in Dadaab prepare to distribute 7,000 jerry cans and bars of soap to newly arrived refugees who have walked for many days across the desert from Somalia. Shot by Oxfam East Africa, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

System of phone alerts could warn of extreme weather in India

Terra Daily: Computer scientists in India have created image-based mobile phone alerts for extreme weather they say could prevent casualties in cyclones.

When Cyclone Phailin hit India in late 2013 it was the largest storm to batter the subcontinent in over a decade, affecting more than 12 million people in India and neighboring countries and requiring mass evacuations.

The scale of the evacuations revealed an urgent need for an effective alert system that could forewarn the majority of the population, the scientists said. A paper published in Atmospheric Science Letters details how the researchers were able to track its genesis, progression and landfall using the country's Weather Research and Forecasting system.

Converting this information into images suitable for phones yielded a forecasting and warning system accessible to ordinary citizens, they said.

"Cyclone alerts can save lives and property, but must be easily accessible," researcher Sat Ghosh said. "The global perception of India's emerging IT prowess is lopsided. It is thought of as merely a manufacturing hub; however, our article puts the country's numerical literacy to practical use."...

Teenagers on a cell phone in Kolkata, shot by Biswarup Ganguly, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Artificial intelligence to help disaster aid coordination

Jan Piotrowski in SciDev.net: The “fragmented” coordination between relief actors in the Philippines following Typhoon Haiyan last month underscores the need for artificial intelligence to streamline disaster response, says a team behind such an effort.

The ORCHID project — a consortium of UK universities and private firms — aims to make this possible by combining human and artificial intelligence into an efficient complementary unit known as a Human Agent Collective (HAC).

The computer systems being developed can assume tasks such as directing surveillance drones, resource management and search planning, says David Jones, head of Rescue Global, the disaster response organisation responsible for testing the software next year.

“Coordination of such a large response [after a disaster] is so challenging without technological assistance that makes data more accessible,” he tells SciDev.Net while on mission in the Philippines. “Bringing humans and artificial intelligence together is the only way to get the job done better.”

Computers’ data-crunching abilities mean they are good at making sense of the huge amounts of information generated during an emergency from local status reports, social media, and the array of organisations involved in the relief effort.

By collecting and analysing these data, HAC systems can flexibly implement a number of activities vital for disaster response, says Jones. These include planning the flight paths of surveillance drones, verifying the authenticity of information coming in from social media, facilitating data sharing and organising human teams based on their skill sets and current needs on the ground....

A drone used for a less benevolent purpose in Afghanistan, shot by Fg Off Owen Cheverton (UK defense imagery, aapprently), Wikimedia Commons, under the Open Government Licence v1.0

Software helps automate, speed-up disaster aid

Richa Malhotra in SciDev.net: A piece of software developed by a Canadian non-profit organisation is helping humanitarian aid agencies to improve the logistics of aid distribution in disaster-affected countries.

World Vision Canada has developed ‘Last Mile Mobile Solutions’ (LMMS), a mobile and desktop software package which automates and speeds up the emergency relief activities that distribute aid to people affected by natural disasters or disease outbreaks.

Oxfam, Medair and the Norwegian Refugee Council are among the agencies to have already used the software and there are plans by World Vision to use it in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, too.

With a new android version of the software released last month to make the process even quicker, and a recent grant for the LMMS of US$900,000 from Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, more aid workers are set to benefit from the switch to digital.

Conventional aid delivery involves agencies manually inputting rations and supplies into paper files while working on the ground in disaster-hit areas. LMMS automates this, making aid agencies more efficient and accountable....

 US aid to the Philippines after Typhoon Megi in 2010, US Department of Defense photo

Use big data wisely and it can provide big insights

Robert Kirkpatrick of UN Global Pulse in SciDev.net: The variety of data generated every day — from satellite images to people’s geotagged photos of their breakfast — is astonishing. The sheer quantity now being produced is hard to fathom: experts estimate that 90 per cent of all the digital data in the world has been generated over the last two years.

The term ‘big data’ refers to the information generated by the everyday use of digital services, produced so frequently, in such diverse ways and at scales so large that it cannot be stored or analysed through traditional means. Analysis of this information can provide valuable insights about human behaviour and intentions.

This new era of big data represents significant challenges and opportunities for global development. With support and guidance, the development community can embrace the craft of ‘data science’ to enhance evidence-based decision-making. Yet it is important that humanitarian and development practitioners and policymakers understand that data on its own can’t inform the development agenda without a detailed understanding of its local context.

Global Pulse, a UN innovation initiative established by secretary-general Ban Ki-moon in 2009, is working to build development sector capacity to make use of new sources of digital data while understanding its local context.

The initiative is exploring how powerful the insights from big data can be. One example is our research project looking at how Twitter can provide information on how people are affected by food price spikes. We analysed millions of public tweets from between 2010 and 2011 for particular key words. In one data set containing thousands of tweets from Indonesia discussing the price of rice, we saw that the volume of tweets about staple foods correlated closely with actual spikes in their cost. Learning how to identify and understand such data could help the development community anticipate trends....

Image of a data cloud by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Data for development: revolution kicks off in Côte d’Ivoire

Mico Tatalovic in SciDev.net: We live in exciting times. Hoards of data collected routinely by big telecom companies — but which are currently sitting idle — are about to hit the research community and be used for as yet un-thought of applications. The UN high-level panel recently called for a ‘data revolution’ to underpin the planning and evaluation of the post-2015 development goals.

A taste of what might be in store was presented at the European Development Days meeting in Brussels, Belgium, this week (26 November). Mobile communications company Orange has huge amounts of data on traffic between its mobile masts, and in 2012 it decided to release some of that data from Côte d’Ivoire to researchers worldwide in a challenge to make use of that data. It anticipated 40 or 50 project applications and got 260 instead, though few came from African countries or Côte d’Ivoire itself.

The results, first released in May this year, were astounding. What had been — and largely remains — locked-up data, was analysed and presented by scientists to reveal a host of information with development applications.

Examples include better understanding of disease epidemics and their control, better traffic and parcel delivery planning, and insights into social divisions.

...And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Orange is now in talks with universities and ministries in Côte d’Ivoire about following up with a closer analysis of some of that data. It is also planning to repeat the experiment in another African country though it won’t reveal which one yet. And there is so much other data it has stored away, from, say, the age of mobile-phone users to information on solar radiation intensity at its solar-powered masts across the country....

A disguised cell phone tower in Capetown, shot by Dillon Marsh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

New climate-studying imager makes first balloon flight

NASA: Understanding Earth’s dynamic climate requires knowledge of more than just greenhouse gases. One of the key measurements scientists measure is reflected solar radiance, or the amount of outgoing sunlight energy scattered from Earth’s surface and atmosphere. Watching solar radiances over time helps scientists gauge and better understand environmental changes like global warming.

Earth-observing satellites have provided measurements of solar radiances for many years, but recent technology advances could lead to new measurements with a higher level of accuracy from those currently available. The next generation, higher-accuracy data would enable climate predictions and trends that could be clearly seen using data sets that are much shorter in duration than the current data sets needed for these types of studies, thus enabling faster detection of climate trends and more timely results.

NASA's Earth Science Technology Office is supporting the development of a new generation of scientific instrument that may one day orbit Earth. The HyperSpectral Imager for Climate Science (HySICS), developed by Greg Kopp of the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), is a testbed demonstrating improved techniques for future space-based radiance studies.

HySICS made its inaugural engineering balloon flight from Fort Sumner, N.M., the morning of Sept. 29. Balloon flights provide realistic, space-like conditions at a fraction of the cost of launching an instrument into space, so is an ideal means of testing new technologies. A 60-story tall balloon lifted HySICS to an altitude of nearly122,000 feet, far above the majority of Earth’s atmosphere, heights where the sky is nearly as black as in space. From this vantage point HySICS, aided by the pointing precision of NASA’s Wallops Arc Second Pointer (WASP), was able to make measurements of Earth, the sun and the moon during both daylight and night hours.

The hyperspectral imager, which spans a 10 kilometer field of view of Earth from the balloon’s altitude, collected radiance data for nearly half of its eight and a half hour flight. The instrument periodically calibrated itself by performing highly accurate radiance scans of the sun and moon. This calibration ensures that the radiance measurements collected of Earth are able to reach the high-accuracy data needs of climate researchers....

The high-altitude balloon that carried the HySICS instruments to the outermost part of Earth's atmosphere was inflated with helium at sunrise on the morning of Sept. 29, 2013. Image Credit: HySICS Team/LASP

Smartphones could provide weather data in poor nations

Laura Garcia in SciDev.net: Smartphones can now be used to collect weather data such as air temperatures through WeatherSignal, a crowdsourcing app developed by UK start-up OpenSignal.   This helps crowdsource real-time weather forecasts and could one day help collect climate data in areas without weather stations, its developers say.

Once installed, the app automatically collects data and periodically uploads them to a server. The app's ability to record air temperature is based upon the discovery that the temperature of a smartphone battery correlates closely to the surrounding air temperature, published in Geophysical Research Letters this month (13 August).

"Lithium ion batteries have temperature sensors to prevent damage caused by attempts to charge them when the battery is too hot," the paper says. But these sensors do not provide a direct air temperature measurement — due to heat being emitted by both the smartphone and its user. So the researchers used a model that estimates the outside temperature based on smartphone readings. The fact that battery temperature correlates with ambient air temperature was discovered by accident, James Robinson, one of the authors of the paper and co-founder of OpenSignal, tells SciDev.Net. 

The team was researching energy consumption in relation to poor mobile network signal, a condition that is known to reduce battery performance. "We started playing with the data and decided to look at average battery temperature versus historic weather temperature, and we found a really strong correlation," says Robinson....

An Ubuntu smartphone (in an attempt not to be outdated), shot by Cartmanland, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Philippine province to use geographic information systems for forest management

Clarice Africa in FutureGov:   The German Technical Cooperation – Manila, the social development agency in the Philippines on behalf of the German Government, will be conducting capacity building workshop on the use of GIS in forest management.

GIS continues to evolve according to the needs of the users. Since it is capable of handling large amounts of data and create new information about our environment, decision makers can leverage it to arrive at well-informed decisions related to soil and water conservation, wildlife conservation and many others.

The workshop will be given to the Local Government Units located in Easter Samar which include: Guiuan, Llorente, Can-avid and the City of Borongan, which are now being considered as “Eco-towns”. Eastern Samar is one of three provinces on Samar Island, the second largest island in the Visayas, the region between Luzon Island to the north and Mindanao Island to the south....

Caribbean policymakers get climate adaptation tool

Lisbeth Fog in SciDev.net: A decision-support website has been launched to help policymakers in the Caribbean build resilience to the risks that climate change poses to activities such as tourism and agriculture.

The Caribbean Climate Online Risk and Adaptation TooL (CCORAL), unveiled last month (12 July) in Saint Lucía, allows users to identify whether their activity is likely to be influenced by climate change and how to deal with this.

It helps project managers to understand climate influence on decisions, and to choose and apply risk management processes. The initial version has been developed for government users of any skill level for decisions about projects, legislation, budgets and national planning.

The tool was developed by the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, which coordinates the region's response to climate change, and Acclimatise, a company that specialises in adaptation and risk management. "It was piloted in Jamaica, Suriname, Belize and Barbados to inform its design and content," Keith Nichols, development specialist at the centre, tells SciDev.Net…

An aerial view of Paramaribo in Suriname, shot by Loek Tangel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands