Mobile Technologies and Climate Change
According to UN Secretary General, Information Technologies can be used in creative ways to tackle Climate Change. UN teamed up with mobile phone companies and other partners to install 5,000 new weather stations across Africa which will monitor the impacts of climate change and when there is news, text messages will be sent immediately to farmers’ mobile phones.
About 90% of world population lives in mobile network coverage area and 5.3 billion people around the world are enabled to mobile subscriptions, i.e. the Global Mobile Penetration is about 77% of the world population. From 2009 to 2010, the mobile devices sales had increased by 18.5%. There are 450 million people using mobile web globally whereas, more than 300,00 applications are being downloaded 10.9 billion times. In context of Nepal, the mobile penetration rate is about 38.31% and internet penetration rate is about 10.03% as reported by NTA-MIS (May, 2011).
Mobile technology is fostering in high speed as a next technology around the world. Beside a communication device with voice, SMS, internet services as well as camera, GPS, motion sensors and hundreds of applications, mobile technology is a new way to tackle old problem. Recognizing the importance of mobile technology in Climate Change, a project has been developed which is far known as Project Surya. This project is being formulated for collecting climate data on Black Carbon (BC). Individuals will use the camera on the mobile phone to capture and transmit an image containing the air filter and color chart to a server. An algorithm on the server will interpret the image of the filter to automatically compute the daily BC concentrations for that household. Researchers will use the data streams to evaluate the intervention’s impact on regional and global climate change, and its impact on individual pollution exposure and public health.
- How mobile based application works?
How mobile based application works?
The information send by individual’s mobile is generated by the telecommunication operator which will be further accessed by mobile integrator and via NPC website, the information is circulated through internet among the internet users, and vice versa.
Similarly, JavaRosa-Dimagi is another platform to collect and aggregate field data quickly, accurately and securely from an inexpensive handset, a server appliance, to the latest Android device. This open source mobile data collection is being amplified in many countries for different applications including taking survey data, following disease management, guiding health workers through treatment protocols at point of care, and collection of longitudinal medical records.
Mobile Social Networking Nepal has been initiating the network throughout the country to develop mobile applications community of practice and to foster competition of ideas encouraging entrepreneurship. It has been a linkage to mobile industry professional from local to international levels.
Hence, Mobile Technology can be implemented in various fields of health, entertainment, business, payment, Climate Change, Environment, education and so on. This fastest growing technology can be a vital precursor to resolve the impacts of Climate Change locally and globally.
Posted on August 25, 2011, in Articles. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Thank you for another informative site. Where else could I get that type of information written in such an ideal way? I have a project that I am just now working on, and I have been on the look out for such information.
Pingback: Rio+20 Youth Space MGCY launches the GREEN ECONOMY WEEK! get involved! | ecoalgae