Problems
UI/UX design support provided by Azavea
MONITORING THE COURTS
Updated 7 months 2 weeks ago
This initiative aims to give the public better access to information to their local Hungarian judicial process.It will reduce corruption risks in judicial institutions, as well as increase public trust and engagement in monitoring juducial processes.
This system will make judicial institutions more authoritative in the eyes of people. It would also serve a purpose as part of the National Strategy for Corruption Prevention and Eradication which mandates each judicial institution in having an index of law enforcement.
The judicial handling of corruption cases in the public prosecutor office, police institution and court is very closed in nature. The public is not made aware of the way cases are handled including reports, inquiries and investigations, until the case is transferred to court. This means the public does not know how cases develop from start to finish, and even high profile cases, which have been in the media, are often not resolved.
Therefore, because the process is so closed and out of public control, the risk of institutional corruption is very high. This is likely to result in an absence of public trust which will make them ineffective in handling criminal cases, especially corruption. There is a fear that this poor public perception of the due process of law will eventually lead people to fully disregard it, with the potential result in anarchism.
The National Strategy for Corruption Prevention and Eradication, enacted this year, instructs an Index of Law Enforcement as an indicator of success. Information technology is believed as one of priorities to decrease public distrust as a supporting tool to enhance coordination among judicial institutions.
The target group of this initiative are active citizens, anti-corruption activists as well as journalists. It enables them to be more effective and efficient in doing advocacy works on anti corruption. The main beneficiaries of this initiative are: the public in general, law enforcement agencies, anti corruption activists, journalists and the media.
Awareness Creation on Water and Sanitation Issues
Updated 7 months 4 weeks ago
Over 500 million people lack access to safe sanitation and 120 million plus people lack access to safe drinking water in India. In fact, the adverse economic impacts of inadequate sanitation were reported
to be as high as 6.4 percent of India’s Gross Domestic Product (WSP Economics of Sanitation Initiative 2010).
In such a scenario, it becomes critical to create awareness and encourage participation on these issues.
Research has proven that children can be the drivers of change within a community. Given the IT revolution in the country coupled with the ease of access to mobile phones by children, there might be a potential window of opportunity for the sector.
Create applications/tools for children so as to ensure that Water and Sanitation (WatSan) hygiene is instilled in them. This could be achieved through the provision of:
Games, puzzles, and so on,on WatSan emphasizing the ‘play & learn’ approach Free 2D and 3D animations/cartoon applications on WatSan, pre-loaded on mobile phones
Some otherways tocreate awareness on WatSan issues could be the availability of quick ‘Did You Knows’ or ‘Trivia of the Day’ for people, preferably in their local language, on mobile phones, for example, did
you know that open defecation in India is nearly 58 percent vis-à-vis the world percentage?
Owner: Shilpi Jain Water Aid <shilpij11@gmail.com>
Irrigation scheduling
Updated 8 months 23 hours ago
Suggest a technology using accessible mobile platforms to enable farmers to conduct the Checkbook method by using his/her mobile device, such that the application enables coordination between the farmer and neighboring farms as well as with the District Irrigation Engineer.
Background:
The Checkbook method of scheduling enables an irrigation farm manager to monitor a field's daily soil water balance (in terms of inches of soil water deficit), which can be used to plan the next irrigation. This method requires the manager to monitor the growth of the crop, observe the maximum air temperature each day, select the daily ET (evapotranspiration) estimation from the crop water use table, measure the rainfall or irrigation applied to the field, and calculate the new soil water deficit balance. To calculate the new soil water deficit and keep a record of daily changes, the data is entered into the soil water balance sheet like the example presented below. The best time for daily update is early morning after the in-field rain gauges are measured.
Items to Conduct Checkbook Irrigation Scheduling
- Two or more rain gauges
- Max-Min thermometer or access to local temperature reports
- Soil probe or in field moisture sensors
- Daily crop water use table or local ET hotline or website report
- Soil water balance worksheets
The water balance worksheet is operated just like a "checkbook." Each day the estimated crop water use is added to the previous day's soil water deficit, and any rainfall or irrigation amounts are subtracted from this deficit. If a daily rainfall or irrigation event minus the daily crop water use is greater than the current deficit, most of the excess is considered lost due to deep percolation below the rooting zone, and the new deficit balance is generally set to zero. However, for most soils some of the excess water is still available to the plant during deep percolation. This period of excess soil water may last from one day on sandy soils to over two days on a heavy textured soil. Therefore, during this period or until the excess water is consumed by crop water use (ET), the soil water deficit should be kept equal to zero.
Such method was championed by the University of Minnesota with the assumption that farmers will either perform recording and calculations by pen and paper, or by using a personal computer.
For more details contact Sherif at sherif.tawfic@gmail.com
Water Purification Mobile Application
Updated 8 months 1 day ago
A mobile application that can be used to check the purification level of water at a certain location. The application would be used to take a picture of the water and uploaded to a server that processes the image and identifies the level of purity of the water. The server then sends a response on the level of cleanliness of the water and steps to further purify it for multiple purposes.
Alojamientos temporales - Albergues para población colombiana afectada por la Ola Invernal
Updated 8 months 2 days ago
Open Mobile eLearning & Information Platform [de/en]
Updated 8 months 3 days ago
# de
In vielen Entwicklungsländern ist der Zugang zu Informationen für große Teile der Bevölkerung nicht oder nur eingeschränkt gegeben. Dabei ist der Informationsbedarf in armen Regionen, insbesondere in den lebenswichtigen Bereichen, wie der medizinischen Versorgung, Hygiene oder (Land-)Wirtschaft, sehr groß.
Es fehlt an ortsunabhängigen, leicht zugänglichen und barrierefreien Informationskanälen, über die Behörden, Krankenhäuser und Hilfsorganisationen die Menschen flächendeckend erreichen können.
Für die Verbreitung von Informationen über z.B. Hygienemaßnahmen, Verhütung, Krankheitsbilder und Bildungsthemen soll dieses Projekt das Mobilfunknetz verwenden. Denn immer mehr arme Menschen sind mittlerweile im Besitz eines Mobiltelefons. Das Mobilfunknetz entwickelt sich weiter, die großen Armen-Viertel (z.B. Townships in Africa) an den Stadträndern sind zu großen Teilen erschlossen.
# en
Acess to information is limited for most of the people in developing countries. Although the demand for information is of vital importance. Especially in poor regions is the relevance of topics in health care, hygienics and agriculture growing.
Location-independent, wide spread, easily accessible and barrier-free information channels for governmental agencies, hospitals and non-governmental-organizations are missing.
This project should use the mobile network to distribute information f.e. about hygienic measures, prevention, disease patterns and education because the number of cell phone-owning people is still growing. And the cellular networks are even growing in very poor regions and slums.
Reduce energy waste by making consumption transparent to users
Updated 8 months 4 days ago
Users dont know how much energy they consume on their day to day activities. A big step towards reducing energy waste is to make energy consumption transparent.
We propose mapping energy consumption to user interaction events
The idea would be to allow the user to measure consumption before and after starting an activity. For example know how much energy is spent when I watch TV, or when I have the dinner ready, or when I am making coffee in the mornings.
We want to explore several ways to provide feedback to the user:
- Visual feedback on an energy consumption graph where user interactions are mapped.
- Acoustic feedback on exceeding energy consumption tresholds.
- Computer generated speech feedback with energy consumption values
- Any other ideas for increasing awareness of the impact in energy consumption by user activities.
World and Regional Water Price Index
Updated 8 months 4 days ago
Problem: Do we have correct information on on the price of water at home?
Water is becoming costly and it is important to have it properly priced to maintain water supply and sanitation services. Underpricing leads to poor financing, lack of investment and, commonly, to neglect of the service. Nevertheless, water remains undervalued, even in water scare regions of the world, threatening the sustainability of many water supply and sanitation projects.
Underpricing of water services can adversely impact the poor, who remain unconnected while service providers fail to meet demand as they struggle to maintain existing infrastructure. In turn, unconnected water users must often resort to buying water at a much higher price from vendors, leading to the perverse situation where those with the least means must pay the most for water.
Almost all water utilities now have their websites where they put water tariffs (rates, prices, cost to cosumers, etc.). However, it is like your phone bill: surcharges, taxes, rouming fees, govermental and environmental additions. And at the end, from the nominal price of US$1 per m3 you get 150-200% on top.
Comparisons are also difficult: who can tell by heart how many gallons in 100 cubic feet? Whats is a price per cubic meter of water if 1000 gallons cost US$2.53 + taxes (see above).
Plus many rates are dependent on consumption. Add to that currency exchanges and you will understand the magnitude of the problem.
How can you, the best hacker in the World, find the true water residential price in your city (or another city you like) according to the IBNET standard:
The 2011 IBNET water tariff database reports the water price charged to the domestic users per m3 for the first 15 m3 consumed through the 20 mm (5/8 inch) pipe according to the formula:
Tariff per m3 = [connection fee +volumetric charge per 15 m3 per month + taxes and other fees]/15/[currency exchange rate]
Black Ball
Updated 8 months 6 days ago
Every 5 minutes someone is declared bankrupt or insolvant in the UK. Over 10,000 people seek debt advice every day. People often struggle to organise their bills and arrangements with creditors.
Real Time Climate Data Comparison Platform
Updated 8 months 6 days ago
In the absence of weather station data, Meteorological Satellite Information (MSI) is crucial to estimating local climate. MSI is used worldwide to understand climate change effects, formulating strategies for disaster risk management, and analyzing the gap between water supply and demand. This knowledge, especially precipitation behavior – main supplier of water - allows countries to promote effective planning for fighting poverty.
However, while MSI can estimate climate where there aren't any weather station, the accuracy of MSI depends heavily on field data (weather stations on the ground) to calibrate outputs. Therefore, there is a contradiction here: if MSI requires field data for accuracy, how can MSI be useful in places where no weather station data is available?
The first challenge is to bring together satellite and ground information for users in real time and create a tool which will produce a geospatial representation of both sources of information.
The second challenge is to generate an "averaged" geospatial map from the combination of MSI and the ground data.