Yesterday, 5 March 2008, LIRNEasia, with its Indonesian partner, the Indonesian Institute for Disaster Preparedness (IIDP), held the final HazInfo workshop at the Hotel Borobudur in Jakarta, Indonesia. The “Sharing Knowledge on Disaster Warning: Community-based Last-Mile Warning Systems” workshop included several highlights such as a testimonial from an Aceh survivor of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami; informative presentations from the Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI), KOGAMI Padang, GTZ-GITEWS, Bureau of Meteorology and Geophysics (BMG) and the University of Syiah Kuala, Aceh. The workshop encouraged animated discussion on the importance of community-based early warning systems, training, and the necessity for information to follow warning.
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According to LIRNEasia’s latest comparative study of price and affordability indicators in eight South Asian countries, Bangladesh emerges as having the lowest average monthly cost of using a mobile at all levels of use (low, medium and high) for different tariff plans (prepaid and postpaid). Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka follow closely, while Bhutan, Maldives and Afghanistan are seen to have significantly higher average monthly mobile costs.
The study compares mobile tariffs in South Asia using price baskets, derived from those used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The baskets are calculated for low, medium and high users for pre- as well as postpaid tariff plans, factoring in usage charges (voice and SMS), line rental, connection charges (depreciated over a three year period), and…
LIRNEasia has come up with startling evidence on how transaction costs in agriculture could be reduced by simple mobile phone applications. The organization’s Lead Economist, Dr. Harsha de Silva called for a multi-stakeholder action plan to implement a series of actions that would help poor farmers as well as consumers by reducing information costs in agricultural markets and value chains. He was speaking at a panel following a public lecture by Indian Institute of Management Professor, Subhash C. Bhatnagar, who spoke on the benefits of ICT applications to farmers, taking India as an example.
eChoupal model, an initiative by Indian Tobacco Company, said Prof. Bhatnagar, is a good case study how ICTs can reduce transaction costs for the farmers. Electronic market places or Internet kiosks are…
Please find the concept note added : sustainability-first-concept-note-for-research-version-1.pdf
Please note that this Colloquium is being Skypecast at https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/search.html?search=lirneasia
The Colloquium started out with basic introductions of Dr. Harsha Liyanage and the LIRNEasia crew.
He then went on to explain that he was interested in Telecenters and the Sarvodaya Fusion movement. He went on to tackle the issue of whether Telecenters are sustainable in their own right. He says that there is a negative perception about the sustainability of Telecenters. This is the view often shared by policy makers, regulators, researchers and donors. He went on to speak of the blog site and the telecenter network that has been created to improve the sustainability.
Helani questioned the reasoning behind the reason for focusing on telecenter networks. Harsha responded that prior…
LIRNEasia’s annual report for the year ending 31 March 2007 is now available for download here.
21 - 23 February 2008 at Kandalama Hotel, Kandalama, Sri Lanka
LIRNEasia hosted a Workshop to discuss the policy level implications and business level possibilities of using ICTs to reduce transaction costs in the agricultural value chain as well as to improve traceability and enhance quality of products sold. The Workshop brought together key stakeholders consisting of policy makers, private and public sector participants and researchers, both in agriculture and ICT. It was based on the pilot projects conducted by LIRNEasia in 2007, which was discussed in detail at the Workshop.
All presentations made at the Workshop can be found below:
Traceability: International Perspective - Visoot Phongsathorn
Linking Sri Lankan farmers to global markets - Dr. Harsha de Silva
Please note that a Colloquium will be held on Tuesday the 5th of February to review the presentations that will be delivered at the Agriculture Workshop from the 21st - 23rd of Feb
The Colloquium will be conducted by Shamistra Soysa, Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara and Harsha de Silva.
The Colloquium will be blogged in live time and I urge those who cannot attend to participate virtually.
The Colloquium will commence at 4 p.m (SL/ India time) and will be held at the LIRNEasia office in Colombo.
The Colloquium will be be available for online participation through a conference call on Skype
- Please search for the user asia@lirne.net
- Request for details to be exchanged
- Call the user
- Join our Colloquium
lirneasia_colloquium_jan_08.ppt
A Colloquium will be conducted by Robin Mansell on the 19th of January 2008 at the LIRNEasia office in Colombo.
Robin Mansell, Ph.D., joined the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) in 2001 where she is Professor in the Department of Media and Communications. She is Honorary Professor at the LINK Centre, Wits Graduate School of Public & Development Management, South Africa, as well as Honorary Professor at SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research), University of Sussex. She is also a Trustee of IDS (Institute of Development Studies), Sussex, and is an elected academic Governor of the LSE from 2005. She is President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). She was elected in July 2004 and serves for four years.
Robin’s…
On December 31, 2007, DataQuest India published an article entitled “Disaster Alert” that featured LIRNEasia’s “Evaluating Last Mile Hazard Information Dissemination” (HazInfo) project.
LIRNEasia Lead Economist Harsha de Silva was invited to be the Consultant to a recent Expert Group Meeting on the Provision of ICT Access for Disadvantaged Communities through Public-Private Partnerships conducted by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission fro Asia and the Pacific [ESCAP]. A number of influential policy makers and academics from the region participated at the meeting held between 12-14 December in Bangkok. Harsha set the stage for the expert group meeting by preparing a draft background paper and made a concluding presentation incorporating many of LIRNEasia research findings across the region. Harsha emphasized the need for policies to bridge the market efficiency gap in ICT access through better and conducive regulation and advocated innovative PPPs for bridging identified access gaps in rural BOP segment.
Find the draft background paper…
Ms. Helani Galpaya presented “Taking e-Government to the Bottom of the Pyramid: dial-a-Gov?” co-authored by herself, Prof. Rohan Samarajiva and Ms. Shamistra Soysa at the 1st International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV 2007) held in Macao on the 10 - 13 December 2007.
This paper won the “Best Paper in the Practice” at this conference which was one of the three awards given out. The others were for best paper in theory and best paper in linking theory and practise. A pre publication version of the paper is available here
The LIRNEasia HazInfo team, Rohan Samarajiva, Nuwan Waidyanatha, Natasha Udu-gama, joined its partners from Sarvodaya, Dialog Telekom and WorldSpace Corporation (India) to present findings from the “Evaluating Last Mile Hazard Information Dissemination” (HazInfo) pilot project at the “Making Communities Disaster Resilient” on December 11, 2007 during the Third Global Knowledge Partnership (GK3) conference in Kuala Lumpur from 11-13 December.
The session, moderated by Prof. Rohan Samarajiva, presented findings and analysis within a 90-minute session divided into two mini-sessions on technology and community. Mr. Michael De Soyza of Dialog Telekom and Mrs. Mala Rao of WorldSpace Corporation (India) presented their respective technologies piloted in the project. In the second mini-session on community, Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne, Executive Director, Sarvodaya discussed the Sarvodaya approach to making communities disaster resilient. Natasha Udu-gama and Nuwan Waidyanatha presented…
A major telecom event in one of the most exciting markets in the world, India, is underway in New Delhi, Dec 12-14, 2007.
LIRNEasia presented its teleuse@BPO research at the first session: rs_indiatelecom07_final.ppt/ The central message was that India had to take the road less traveled by, focusing on developing the mobile as an interface to the Internet and its communication, information retrieval, publishing, transacting, etc. functionalities, if it is not to leave behind the people at the Bottom of the Pyramid. A most fascinating presentation by Steve Rondel of Conversay showed that voice interface with the mobile was not as distant as some think it might be.
Contrary to the idea of developing the mobile as the next Internet device preferably using voice and other alternatives to data…
When asked this was Intel’s response to the $ 100 (er…$ 176) laptop, pat came the reply: “Yeah, you could call that” It is meant for children, but classmate PC is not a toy. It is a tiny version of a fully pledged PC. (512 M memory 2 GB in a flash, though no hard drive) The screen size is smaller, but on the other hand it is not easy to break even if you dropped it from a height. (Yes, they demonstrated it!)
This was seen at the GK3 exhibition at Kuala Lumpur Conventional Centre where the so-called $100 green coloured OLPC laptop was a notable absentee. By the way Intel classmate costs $220, and will be available for the governments to buy in bulk
A…
The Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications (WPMC2007) symposium was held in Jaipur, India, December 03 - 06, 2007. The paper by N. Waidyanatha, S. Rangarajan, G. Gow, and P. Anderson (December 2007), Last-Mile Hazard Warning System in Sri Lanka: Performance of WorldSpace Addressable Satellite Radios for Emergency Alerts, IEEE Proceedings of the WPMC 10th International Symposium, pages 233 - 238, can be found here.
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