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01.12

IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference

By George F. McClure

In late October 2011, Scientists, engineers, technology professionals, academics, foundations, government and non-government organizations, and individuals engaged in humanitarian work gathered at the inaugural IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference in Seattle to present and discuss solutions for present and future humanitarian needs. Participants from all over the world attended and participated in the program of tutorials, invited talks, panels, technical sessions, exhibits, networking, and social activities.

Following the Conference theme of “Technology for the benefit of humanity,” topics included:

• Health, Medical Technology and Telemedicine

• Disaster Warning/Response

• Water Planning, Availability and Quality

• Power for Off-Grid Users

• Power Infrastructure/ Renewable/Sustainable Energy

• Connectivity and Communications Technologies (data/voice) for Remote Locations

• Educational Technologies

• Agricultural Technologies

• Humanitarian Challenges and Opportunities

This first-ever global humanitarian technology conference attracted 222 registered attendees to hear a program that included over 110 papers. Conference papers will be accessible through IEEE Xplore early next year.

The Global Need

Statistics speak to the need:

Roughly 1.6 billion people, one out of every four people on the planet, do not have regular access to electricity. In sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa, 75% of households or 550 million people have no access to network electricity.

In South Asia, in places such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, 700 million people or 50% of the overall population and 90% of the rural population are not on the grid. Based on the business as usual scenarios, the International Energy Agency predicts that 1.4 billion people will still lack access to electricity in 2030.

In Haiti, destruction of the water system in the 2010 earthquake led to an outbreak of cholera acknowledged by the United Nations.

Tutorials Focused on Key Aspects

Three parallel half-day tutorials preceded the conference. They were “Affordable Energy Solutions for Developing Communities,” by Robin Podmore, co-chair of the IEEE Community Solutions Initiative (slogan: Energy solutions for the world’s poorest communities)); “Village-Level Renewable Energy Projects for the Developing World,” by Michel Maupoux; and” Systems Thinking and Village Development,” by John Coonrod.

As noted, a problem in many underdeveloped areas is lack of electric power. Lots of pro bono work has resulted in open source designs that can be readily replicated and are scalable.

Sponsored by IEEE’s Humanitarian Technology Challenge, Power and Energy Society, and Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society, the Community Solutions Initiative was formed to meet these needs. Keys are developing extremely affordable open-source electric energy solutions for developing country communities, supporting locally-owned micro-business development, and reaching a significant portion of the un-served electricity population in each country where deployed.

 For Haiti, a “yellow package” battery kit was developed providing 18 ampere-hours of electricity, using a 12-volt battery. The battery kits can be recharged from a 1,470 watt solar photovoltaic trailer. A sustainable business model has been developed in which locals rent out the battery kits, which can provide lighting for 10 foot X 16 foot homes. The homeowner does not buy anything, but pays a fee for service. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) pay the capital cost. The battery kits can be recharged in three hours after they have been depleted to half-capacity, at a cost of $5.00. A light stick with 1/5 watt power consumption enables a user to read a newspaper in the dark. Ninety-six homes can use light sticks for a charge of one dollar per month. IEEE is cooperating in a program with Sirona Cares, a non-profit already operating in Haiti, to provide basic electricity in the homes of one million Haitians using this sustainable business model. Station operators get a percentage of the retail collections. Photovoltaic panels generate electricity at a cost of $1.50 per watt. Experience has shown that PV panels supplied by the government are often stolen, but they are left intact where the villagers are involved.

A total of 21 solar trailers are planned for Haiti, at a cost of $300,000. A solar suitcase has been developed to provide lighting for medical clinics.

Thus far, 240 battery kits have been deployed in homes. Pride of ownership is shown in that all bills are paid on time and there is no theft of equipment. The cost for service is about $10.50 per month for electricity and lighting.

Bicycle-powered generators can be pedaled comfortably at a 40-watt output level.

Affordable wind turbines, useful for energy poverty alleviation, were described by Dr. Henry Louie.  Zambia was used as a case study. The population is 12 million, with 25 percent having electricity. But in rural communities where 8 million live only 4 percent have access to electricity. Half of the rural population have electronic devices, such as cell phones or hand-cranked radios. A 700-watt wind turbine with 5 foot blades has been built and tested using an open source design that can be replicated in-country. Parts cost in the U.S. is $1,343. Where wood availability is limited, 4-foot blades can be used instead of five foot. A smaller version generates 30 watts to serve a village of 1,000 people. In Zambia, the cost to charge cell phones is about 1,000 times the U.S.cost — 20 cents to 30 cents per charge, but the enterprise can support social businesses in-country, both manufacturing and service. A high site location is required to get enough wind (at 100 inches, 25 miles per hour was experienced). A problem is limited availability of rare earth magnets. Experience shows that a 5 to 7 Tip Speed Ratio (TSR) is best to extract the most wind energy. Future plans include a 100 watt wind turbine.

Zambia has a 15 percent import tax on windmills. Micro-loans for local enterprises are usually $500 or less.

Consider the Application Before Doing the Designn

Lessons learned: The latest technology is likely not the right solution, because it may be hard for the locals to maintain over the long haul. Involving the local population gives a sense of “buy-in” and ownership; more care will be exercised in preserving the assets this way than if a faceless government or NGO is the provider. A scalable business model that is sustainable with local folks in the loop is best.

Cathy Leslie, PE, executive director of Engineers Without Borders-USA, mentioned two contrasting projects: in Guatemala, locals took ownership of a water system project, and it succeeded. But a solar system was installed in Tanzania that locals could not maintain. Her top ten tips for projects in underdeveloped areas to succeed:

• Keep the design simple

• Start small

• Involve the local community

• Use local materials, local supply chains, and power

• Select appropriate technology, including location for the project

• Use multidisciplinary team partners, to be successful

• Communicate

• Consider unintended consequences (does the project reveal a need for more schools and teachers?)

• Monitor and evaluate progress — the learning curve may take five years

• Share lessons learned.

A Flatter World

In his closing remarks, 2012 IEEE President Gordon Day called for IEEE to take on the challenge of Global Electrification and announced that would be a top priority for his term as president. He noted the role of the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) in the United States, where only 11 percent of farms had electricity in 1935, but nearly all farms had electricity twenty years later. The mission of the REA was later extended to include wider telephone service.  The result was a flatter world than had ever existed. But still, over 1.4 billion people worldwide — 21 percent of the world’s population according to the International Energy Agency — are off the grid — they don’t have access to electricity. The problem is most acute in Africa. With current policies, and population growth, by 2030, 15 percent of the population will lack electricity access, but that will still be 1.2 billion people.

An Early Humanitarian Technology Challenge

In June of 2009 at the National Academy of Sciences, the Humanitarian Technology Challenge solution teams were formed. In the simplest terms the overall challenge was to find better ways to apply technology to alleviate human suffering in the world. The HTC was initially sponsored by the IEEE and the United Nations Foundation. For the last two years the IEEE has been the sole sponsor.

After a careful review of issues for people living in the poorest parts of the world, the Reliable Electricity Solution Team chaired by Butch Shadwell set out to design and build a prototype power system that:

1.       Would take a first cut at creating electrical solutions to these issues, and

2.       Act as a field experiment to gather more firsthand information about the problem domain.

Two systems for off-the-grid lighting, using photovoltaic panels to provide 300 watts for high-output LED lamps, were installed for schools in Nicaragua earlier this year.

A similar system installed in Kenya in December 2011 is over-designed in order to meet the full objectives of this first phase of field experiments. Since it is anticipated that many users will be illiterate in any language, the system was designed to be user obvious. That is, that someone with no familiarity with electricity could intuitively put the system together and make it operate without danger of damaging any components. To that end the system employs much more internal management intelligence than would normally be expected in a system of this size. All subsystems are continually monitored and remedial actions are automated as much as possible. The system also has a low power consuming internal data logger that can record environment conditions, system performance and user behavior, for later analysis toward a more perfect second iteration of the design.

Special features of the power control unit:

1.       All loads have auto-resetting circuit protection.

2.       Programmatic control over all loads, with current sense.

3.       Connectors can be powered down when the load is disconnected.

4.       Pictographs for user indicators.

5.       No exposed wiring, and batteries are encapsulated.

6.       Many more special features …

A Facebook page with comments about the excitement of villagers who have electric lights for the first time is found at [Butch Shadwell is wearing a straw hat in the first photo.]

The origins of the Humanitarian Fund

Past IEEE President Lew Terman recalled how humanitarian efforts were organized and how this conference was kicked off.

"By the end of my presidency in 2008, during which I had had a focus on IEEE having greater focused and coordinated involvement in efforts involving humanitarian activity, we felt a growing need for having a major conference to attract people from around the world to listen to talks, exchange ideas, results, learn, and generally to interact and network within the humanitarian technology sphere. There is a lot of effort going on around the world, but it is scattered, disparate, and communication between those involved is hit or miss. While there have been scattered conferences, to our knowledge there was no major conference with the goal of pulling a large international audience together and covering a wide range of the important topics, as is done with numerous IEEE Society and Council flagship conferences. What humanitarian conferences we knew of had been one-offs, with no year-to-year repetition, something which IEEE had shown to be a key element in continued progress within a given technical area.

"I was contacted in late 2009 by a member of the Seattle Section who wanted to have an international humanitarian technology conference. These discussions resulted in the Seattle Section and Region 6 deciding to hold a conference and being willing to accept the financial responsibility for it. This was a gutsy move, since the financial model was expected to be quite different than the typical IEEE conference, where there is funding to support attendees, and there was a substantial chance for a significant financial hit. Much effort was spent on getting donations from various organizations; the IEEE HTF of the Foundation was one. The others are listed in the proceedings of the conference.

"A team was assembled in early 2010, which allowed only about 18 months to pull conference together, a relatively short time, especially for a new conference. However, with a lot of emails burning up the internet and weekly or biweekly telecons, it all came together in astonishingly effective fashion, and a lot of credit is due to the hard work of the organizers.

"Of particular note was the need for publicity. The humanitarian space is not a single coherent community, as is normally found in the various technical communities in the IEEE fields of interest, with databases of conference attendees, published authors, and previous presentations. In the absence of such databases, making sure the right people knew about the conference was of prime importance, and a successful effort to reach out was carried out, with skillful use of social networking and other modern means of communication."

IEEE Support for Disaster Relief

Two major disasters occurred in 2010, an earthquake in Haiti and floods in Pakistan. In both cases, IEEE established special funds for voluntary contributions for relief.

The Haiti Fund for relief after the January 12, 2010 earthquake amounted to $105,298.09, with IEEE contributing a match to the first $50,000.

The Pakistan Fund for 2010 flood relief and reconstruction totaled $105,017, with IEEE contributing a match to the first $50,000. About a fifth of the country’s inhabitants were affected.

The IEEE Foundation has awarded, to date, the following grants from the:

IEEE Haiti Education and Professional Development Rebuilding Fund:

1.       1. $50,000 to IEEE Power & Energy Society's Community Solutions Initiative for "Community Entrepreneur Solar Electricity for Rural Haiti"

2.       $7,070 of the $17,000 grant to Illinois Institute of Technology: IIT Empowering Haiti for "Solar Transformation for Haitian Education" (the other $9,930 came from the IEEE Foundation General Fund)

Another grant is pending.

IEEE Pakistan Engineering Educational and Professional Development Rebuilding Fund

1.       $45,000 to UET Peshawar for "Project for Flood Affected Areas Nowshera District"

2.      $35,000 to Allama Iqbal Open University for "Computer Based Training in Regional Center D.G Khan for Flood Affected Areas in Southern Punjab"

3.      $15,000 to Air University for "Support Schools and Colleges of Flood Affected areas of District Rajan Pur (near DG Khan)"

Finally, Dr. Tony Marjoram, retired recently from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, described the work of UNESCO and its first-ever report on engineering, done under his leadership.

Engineering is so successful and pervasive, however, that it can be taken for granted and is often overlooked by the public and policy-makers. At the same time, fewer young people in many countries are going into engineering, and there are worldwide concerns about declining human capacity and the consequences for poverty reduction and sustainable development. Reports of shortages of engineers in key sectors are common. This is compounded by the brain-drain of engineers from developing countries and out of [the practice of] engineering. These issues are linked and provide an opportunity for change: the public perception of engineering reflects the changing needs for engineering, and need for engineering to change, and young people are concerned about global issues and attracted to engineering as a means to address them [1].

The full 392-page report is accessible at online.

Acknowledgements

The assistance of Lew Terman, Moshe Kam, Gordon Day, Ed Perkins, Paul Kostek and Butch Shadwell in the preparation of this article is gratefully acknowledged.

References

[1] Engineering: Issues and Challenges for Development (First UNESCO International Engineering Report), found online at: http://portal.unesco.org/science/en/ev.php-URL_ID=6991&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

	Comments on this story may be emailed directly to Today's Engineer or submitted through our online form.

George F. McClure is Technology Policy editor and member of Communications Committee for IEEE-USA.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.

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