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Tsunami dramatizes value of simple IT solutions
by Jenn Shreve
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During a July 2004 field trip to the Indian fishing village of Veerampattinam, a local fisherman (far left) explains to Berkeley’s Eric Brewer (third from right) and team how each day’s forecast is downloaded via the Internet and broadcast by bullhorns along the coast to warn of dangerous storms. When the first tsunami hit this beach on December 26, the system was used to clear the beach; only three people were lost.
ARIANNA TIBUZZI PHOTO
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In December, as massive tsunamis inflicted unprecedented devastation on Southeast Asia and beyond, Berkeley EECS professor Eric Brewer and a team of eight graduate students and researchers from Intel were searching for new ideas on how their research could help the troubled region.
“Life in these regions is fragile on a good day, so when something goes catastrophically wrong, it’s far worse than the same thing would be here,” says Brewer. “Technology can help.”
In fact, there’s evidence that it already has. A former resident was able to call one of the few phones in his Indian fishing village of Nallavadu, located in southeast India’s Pondicherry region, to warn residents of the tsunami. The warning was broadcast over a public address system in time for residents to evacuate. Although 46 fishermen and others perished in neighboring beachside villages, everyone in Nallavadu survived.
“That’s proof that even a very simple information system can save lives and, in fact, did save lives in this village,” says Brewer. Nallavadu’s public address system predated his presence in the region, but it is precisely the type of solution Brewer is looking for: low-cost, low-power systems, usable by people with little or no technical expertise and, therefore, viable in developing nations.
Brewer is principal investigator for Berkeley’s five-year program known as Information and Communication Technology for Billions, or ICT4B, which is working with local residents, non-governmental organizations, and industry partners in India and Sri Lanka to investigate, create, and test technology systems designed specifically for the four billion people worldwide who live on less than $2000 per year.
The researchers are working in Nallavadu and similar villages to erect WiFi (wireless networking) antennas that reach distances of up to 30 kilometers to provide affordable and easy access to weather conditions for fishermen, crop prices for farmers, health news, and when possible, warnings of imminent disaster.
Affiliated with the multi–UC campus Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), the program is supported by a $3-million grant from the National Science Foundation and generous support from partners Intel, Microsoft, and others. Brewer points out that working with CITRIS has improved the project’s effectiveness.
“CITRIS is valuable in this context because it’s multidisciplinary,” Brewer says. “CITRIS facilitates mixing social science and technology in a way that traditionally is hard to do.” See the fall 2004 issue of Forefront for more details on the ICT4B project.
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