Prototyping Incentive-based Resource Assignment for Clouds in Community Networks

Wireless community networks are a successful example of a collective where communities operate ICT infrastructure and provide IP connectivity based on the principle of reciprocal resource sharing of network bandwidth. This sharing, however, has not extended to computing and storage resources, resulting in very few applications and services which are currently deployed within community networks. Cloud computing, as in today's Internet, has made it common to consume resources provided by public clouds providers, but such cloud infrastructures have not materialized within community networks. We analyse in this paper socio-technical characteristics of community networks in order to derive scenarios for community clouds. Based on an architecture for such a community cloud, we implement a prototype for the incentive-driven resource assignment component, deploy it in a testbed of community network nodes, and evaluate its behaviour experimentally. Our evaluation gives insight into how the deployed prototype components regulate the consumption of cloud resources taking into account the users' contributions, and how this regulation affects the system usage. Our results suggest a further integration of this regulation component into current cloud management platforms in order to open them up for the operation of an ecosystem of community cloud

The Atlanta Empowerment Zone: Description, Impact, and Lessons for Evaluation

This report analyzes the impact of the Atlanta Empowerment Zone on resident outcomes

Towards a Smarter organization for a Self-servicing Society

Traditional social organizations such as those for the management of healthcare are the result of designs that matched well with an operational context considerably different from the one we are experiencing today. The new context reveals all the fragility of our societies. In this paper, a platform is introduced by combining social-oriented communities and complex-event processing concepts: SELFSERV. Its aim is to complement the "old recipes" with smarter forms of social organization based on the self-service paradigm and by exploring culture-specific aspects and technological challenges.Comment: Final version of a paper published in the Proceedings of International Conference on Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion (DSAI'16), special track on Emergent Technologies for Ambient Assisted Living (ETAAL

Sustainable energy for whom? Governing pro-poor, low-carbon pathways to development: lessons from solar PV in Kenya

Using a combination of insights from innovation studies, sociotechnical transitions theory and the STEPS pathways approach, this paper analyses the evolution of the Kenyan photovoltaics (PV) market. Considered by many to be an exemplar of private sector led development, the Kenyan PV market has witnessed the adoption of more than 300,000 solar home systems and over 100,000 solar portable lights. The notion of an entrepreneurially driven unsubsidised solar market has proved to be a powerful narrative amongst development actors who, paradoxically, have provided millions of dollars of funding to encourage the market’s development. We argue that this donor support has been critical to the success of the market, but not simply by helping to create an enabling environment in which entrepreneurs can flourish. Donor assistance has been critical in supporting a range of actors to build the elements of a PV innovation system by providing active protection for experimentation, network-building, and the construction of shared visions amongst actors throughout supply chains and amongst users.This analysis gives important clues for designing climate and development policies, with implications for the governance of energy access pathways that are inclusive of poor and marginalised groups in low income countries

Financing sustainable energy for all: pay-as-you-go vs. traditional solar finance approaches in Kenya

This paper focuses on finance for Solar Home Systems (SHSs) in Kenya and asks to what extent emerging new finance approaches are likely to address the shortcomings of past approaches. Drawing on the STEPS Pathways Approach we adopt a framing that understands finance within a broader socio-technical context as a necessary but not sufficient component of achieving alternative pathways to sustainable energy access. The paper contributes in four ways. Firstly, it presents a comprehensive overview of past and new emerging approaches to financing SHSs in Kenya and their relative strengths and weaknesses. Secondly, it represents one of the first attempts in the literature to analyse the potential of new, real time monitoring technologies and pay as you go finance models to overcome the barriers faced by conventional consumer finance models for off-grid renewable energy technologies (RETs). Thirdly, by applying for the first time we are aware of a socio-technical approach, via the application of Strategic Niche Management (SNM) theory, to analyse the finance of RETs in developing countries, the analysis considers finance in the context of the social practices poor people seek to fulfil via access to the energy services that off-grid RETs provide, and the ways in which people previously paid for these services (e.g. via kerosene for lighting). This also situates the analysis within the understanding of SHSs as a niche that has to compete with the established regime of energy service provision and its attendant social and political institutional support. The paper therefore also contributes to the small but expanding body of literature that seeks to operationalise socio-technical transitions thinking and SNM within a developing country context

Building pathways of pro-poor energy access: PV-powered electricity services in Kenya

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Learning from 20 Years of Payments for Ecosystem Services in Costa Rica

Costa Rica's Payments for Ecosystems Services (PES) programme has become something of an icon in the world of conservation. Its innovative blend of economic and regulatory instruments - and its hitches and successes - provide a valuable source of inspiration for other countries that are looking for effective ways to conserve and regenerate ecosystems. Since 1997, nearly one million hectares of forest in Costa Rica have been part of the PES programme at one time or another, and forest cover has now returned to over 50 per cent of the country's land area, from a low of just 20 per cent in the 1980s. What lessons can be learnt from the 20 years since it was founded? Also published in Spanish, this paper is for local practitioners, international researchers and donors who are interested in the Costa Rican experience