Do You Hear Me (In a Disaster)?

We just came across this video, posted by our ever-innovative colleagues at LIRNEAsia. In partnership with Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka's largest development organisation, LIRNEAsia recently conducted research on how to best use mobile technology in emergencies.

With ubiquitous and affordable mobile technology a reality not just in Asia but the world over, LIRNEAsia set out to ask a number of important questions: Can talking on the phone help those responding to emergencies to be better organized? How can voice services be used more efficiently in alerting and reporting about disasters than other channels? Where can computer technology make a difference in crisis management?

The video details how LIRNEAsia is experimenting with the open-source Sahana disaster management platform, and with Freedom Fone's interactive voice response system to investigate whether voice-based reporting can fit into globally accepted standards for sharing emergency data. LIRNEAsia found that while the technology isn't perfect, there is much potential for crisis and disaster management. Give it a look - well worth your while. 

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05.16.12 KatrinVerclas Disaster & Humanitarian Relief

Do m-Health Tools Really Work? Testing The Impact of Mobile Technology on Maternal and Child Health Care

(The following case study was written by Kate Otto of The World Bank; it is reprinted here with permission.)

With the proliferation of innovative mHealth tools across the developing world, there comes an inspiring enthusiasm for health system reform. But mHealth raises a critical question as well: how do we know mHealth tools are actually changing health outcomes for the better?

I work with the World Bank and Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia on the evaluation of an mHealth intervention that enables rural community health workers to improve the quality and reach of their maternal and child health care services. We have set out to see if this tool is just a very cool device, or if it actually improves maternal health and decreases maternal and infant mortality.

You may be used to reading about the development and testing of mHealth tools aimed at scaling up to farther-reaching implementation. Our work, however, is a bit different: we built a tool on which we will do no further development, and instead rigorously test the impact of this tool on health outcomes of rural mothers and children through a randomized evaluation.

Basically, we are searching for hard evidence first, and leave a discussion of scale-up for once we have the data.

Since our final results will not be available until early 2013, I’ll share with you today a bit about our research design and the key question we are investigating: Does the use of a mobile phone-based tool for patient registration, appointment reminders, and inventory management in the hands of community health workers result in improved maternal and child health outcomes in a rural Ethiopian setting?

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03.01.12 AnneryanHeatwole Health

Mobile Tactics for Participants in Peaceful Assemblies

If you are participating in a peaceful assembly as a journalist, rights defender, or activist, your mobile phone is an invaluable asset. It allows you to communicate with allies, to document the event, and bear witness to what is happening around you. At the same time, you should take certain precautions in your mobile use and communications. The following Guide can help you to utilize your mobile phone during peaceful assemblies effectively and, at the same time, better protect yourself.

In most public assemblies, you face risks from:

  • Loss and seizure of your mobile phone;
  • Disruptions to service from hardware or network failures;
  • Surveillance of your communications.

Each of these risks can be mitigated to some extent so long as you plan ahead, know your phone, and the basics of how mobile communications works. Remember though, that every situation is different and that mobile phones are inherently insecure communication devices. We urge you to review this Primer on Mobile Risks for more guidance in assessing your mobile risks.

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05.18.11 Ramy Raoof Advocacy Citizen Media Democratic Participation

Fluid Nexus

Fluid Nexus is an application for mobile phones that is primarily designed to enable activists to send messages and data amongst themselves independent of a centralized cellular network. The idea is to provide a means of communication between people when the centralized network has been shut down, either by the government during a time of unrest, or by nature due to a massive disaster. During such times the use of the centralized network for voice or SMS is not possible.

Yet, if we...

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09.08.09 AnneryanHeatwole Advocacy Citizen Media Democratic Participation