LIRNEasia » Rome

LIRNEasia Consultant Lead Economist at IFAD Governing Council Meeting

Nirmali Sivapragasam — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 06:32:05 +0000

Dr. Harsha de Silva, LIRNEasia’s Consultant Lead Economist, was among the invited speakers at the 34th Governing Council meeting of the International Fund for Agricultural Development at its headquarters in Rome from 19 – 20 February 2011. Delegates from the 167 member states met to hear prominent international figures, high-ranking government officials and emerging leaders on topics related to ensuring food security, invigorating small-holder farming and the need to support and encourage rural youth.

A press release issued by IFAD said that Dr. de Silva spoke on the need to improve the quality of life for young rural people and give them the same opportunities young urban people have. Dr. de Silva had emphasized the need to improve the efficiency of rural agricultural and financial markets to fight rural poverty.

The full press release is available here.

HazInfo Canadian Researcher speaks at the 1st WRECOM Conference in Rome

Nuwan Waidyanatha — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:06:00 +0000

Gordon Gow, a lead researcher in the Last-Mile Hazard Warning System (LM-HWS) Pilot (HazInfo project), presented the paper titled – “Community-based Hazard Warnings in Sri Lanka: Performance of Alerting and Notification in a Last-Mile Message Relay” at the 1^st Wireless Rural and Emergency Communications (WRECOM) Conference in Rome, Italy, Oct 01-02.

One of Gordon Gow’s key contributions to the HazInfo project was the Common Alerting Protocol Profile for Sri Lanka, which was a hard case as far as integrating the multi-language scenario as it is the case in Sri Lanka. The CAP Profile for Sri Lanka was designed for disseminations in Sinhala, Tamil, and English languages. Such a complex profile of CAP was field tested in Sri Lanka’s HazInfo project. This was the first time a Multilanguage profile was field tested in the World. The same problem appears in the European Union, for example, where they have a plan to use CAP for internetworking between emergency communicators of the member states in their “command control and coordination system”.

Gordon Gow is an Assistant Professor, Graduate Program in Communications and Technology (MACT), Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta, Canada Currently, his research interests include development of WLL voice and data systems, especially with respect to regulatory concerns such as spectrum policy and management, telecom reform, technical standardization, public safety, and location based services.

Report on WRECOM Conference by G. Gow

Power Point Presentation used by G. Gow in his talk at WRECOM

Paper on Wireless ICTs for Community-based Hazard Warnings in Sri Lanka

HazInfo Paper Accepted for the 1st WRECOM Conference in Rome, Italy

Nuwan Waidyanatha — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 08:39:21 +0000

Paper titled “Community-based Hazard Warnings in Rural Sri Lanka: Performance of a Last-Mile Message Relay”, authors – Gordon Gow (Associate Professor, Faculty of Extensions, University of Alberta, Canada), Peter Anderson (Associate Professor, Department of Telematics, Simon Fraser University, Canada), and Nuwan Waidyanatha (Project Manager, Last-Mile Hazard Warning Systems, LIRNEasia, Sri Lanka), will be presented at the 1^st Wireless Rural Emergency Communication Conference. The WRECOM 2007 Conference is jointly organized by the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, the IEEE Communications Society and the Vehicular Technology/Communications Society joint Chapter Italy Section. The conference will take place in Rome, October 1-2, 2007.

The HazInfo project realized that early warnings via Information Communication Technology (ICT) must be a point-to-multi-point application and is best accommodate by Wireless ICTs. The HazInfo pilot included outfitting and field-testing an initial 32 villages with various combinations of wireless communication equipment, which could provide features such as: early warning wake-up, addressability and provision of information in three languages (English, Sinhalese and Tamil).

In December 2005, LIRNEasia, an ICT policy and reform research organization, initiated a research project to evaluate the “last-of-the-mile” communication component of an all-hazards warning system for Sri Lanka. The project entitled, “Evaluating Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination”, or the “HazInfo Project”, was funded by the International Development Research Center (IDRC) of Canada. Its research design was based on recommendations of a “participatory concept paper” for a national early warning system (NEWS:SL) completed in the months following the 2004 tsunami.