Maintenance of street lighting systems using mobile phones

There is no doubt that street lighting systems have an important role in cities promoting comfort, as well as enhancing safety and security. These kinds of systems require maintenance in order to guarantee operation and reduce energy consumption. To help with certain maintenance tasks, a new smartphone application has been developed. The aim of this tool is to set up street lighting energy efficiency level at the same time that the illuminance level is evaluated. The benefit of this tool is that maintenance staff can assess energy efficiency on an easy and quick way, achieving a result report. In addition, a new Bluetooth device was created to perform the measurements, being necessary to perform a brief study about its accuracy compared with a mobile phone ambient light sensor and an external sensor

Appropriate technology for sustainable food security:

CONTENTS: Brief 1. Overview / Per Pinstrup-Andersen Brief 2. Farmer-Based Agro-Ecological Technology / Jules Pretty Brief 3. Conventional Research-Based Technology / Prabhu Pingali Brief 4. Modern Biotechnology / Calestous Juma Brief 5. Modern Technology for African Agriculture / Jennifer Thomson Brief 6. Information and Communcations Technologies / Nuimuddin Chowdhury Brief 7. GIS, GPS, and Remote Sensing / Uwe Deichmann and Stanley Wood Brief 8. Alternative Energy Sources / R. K. Pachauri and Pooja Mehrotra Brief 9. Food Irradiation / Morton SatinTechnology., Technological innovations., Food security., Sustainability.,

Understanding the Impact of Rural Electrification in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India: Evidence from The Rockefeller Foundation's Smart Power for Rural Development Initiative

Launched in 2015, Smart Power for Rural Development (SPRD) is a $75 million Rockefeller Foundationinitiative aimed at accelerating development in India's least electrified states. Through the deploymentof decentralized, renewable energy mini-grids, SPRD has supported the Foundation's vision of speedingthe growth of rural economies, while at the same time improving the lives and livelihoods of poor andmarginalized families and communities.A monitoring and evaluation (M&E) grantee, Sambodhi, was funded to work alongside implementingpartners to measure and document the changes that the initiative is having in people's lives. Sambodhialso collected data to inform decision making and support course correction throughout the initiative'simplementation.This report summarizes M&E data collected in late 2016, covering the period March 2016–August 2016.The sample for this report is 39 sites across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, consisting of 1,000 households and320 micro-enterprises. Together, these constitute nearly 10 percent of SPRD customers. Another 328non-customer households were consulted to provide a comparative perspective

Code, space and everyday life

In this paper we examine the role of code (software) in the spatial formation of collective life. Taking the view that human life and coded technology are folded into one another, we theorise space as ontogenesis. Space, we posit, is constantly being bought into being through a process of transduction – the constant making anew of a domain in reiterative and transformative practices - as an incomplete solution to a relational problem. The relational problem we examine is the ongoing encounter between individuals and environment where the solution, to a greater or lesser extent, is code. Code, we posit, is diversely embedded in collectives as coded objects, coded infrastructure, coded processes and coded assemblages. These objects, infrastructure, processes and assemblages possess technicity, that is, unfolding or evolutive power to make things happen; the ability to mediate, supplement, augment, monitor, regulate, operate, facilitate, produce collective life. We contend that when the technicity of code is operationalised it transduces one of three forms of hybrid spatial formations: code/space, coded space and backgrounded coded space. These formations are contingent, relational, extensible and scaleless, often stretched out across networks of greater or shorter length. We demonstrate the coded transduction of space through three vignettes – each a day in the life of three people living in London, UK, tracing the technical mediation of their interactions, transactions and mobilities. We then discuss how code becomes the relational solution to five different classes of problems – domestic living, travelling, working, communicating, and consuming