Challenges of tsunami and conflict affected rural water supply in Sri Lanka

The water supply of the rural coastal areas in Sri Lanka is provided by private open dug wells, most of which have been flooded by sea water during the tsunami. The salinity of the well affected proved not to be the main problem, and early attempts to rehabilitate wells failed. Salinity reduction can only be achieved naturally, through the recharge of the aquifer. The true challenge for rural water supply is represented by bacteriological and agricultural contamination and sustainability of handpumps. Constructing back better means also an exit strategy from water trucking that does not focus on salinity, but introduces a new water quality awareness, and new water purification solutions, to the users. A lesson learned: in case of tsunami, do not try to rehabilitate the well, just wait for the rainy season

Video_1_Affordance Equivalences in Robotics: A Formalism.MP4

<p>Automatic knowledge grounding is still an open problem in cognitive robotics. Recent research in developmental robotics suggests that a robot's interaction with its environment is a valuable source for collecting such knowledge about the effects of robot's actions. A useful concept for this process is that of an affordance, defined as a relationship between an actor, an action performed by this actor, an object on which the action is performed, and the resulting effect. This paper proposes a formalism for defining and identifying affordance equivalence. By comparing the elements of two affordances, we can identify equivalences between affordances, and thus acquire grounded knowledge for the robot. This is useful when changes occur in the set of actions or objects available to the robot, allowing to find alternative paths to reach goals. In the experimental validation phase we verify if the recorded interaction data is coherent with the identified affordance equivalences. This is done by querying a Bayesian Network that serves as container for the collected interaction data, and verifying that both affordances considered equivalent yield the same effect with a high probability.</p