Using ICT to support sustainability of water initiatives in fragile states: the case of Goma in DRC

The water sector is increasingly adopting Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools to support water services in developing countries. In an emergency context, ICT tools can help reinforce the impact and resilience of projects by empowering local populations with robust systems that they can adapt to the local context and sustain in the long term. In the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the ongoing conflictual situation provides a continuous influx of NGOs. One consequence is that the population comes to rely on this presence, for instance for construction, operations and even monitoring of water systems. This paper looks at the case of Goma in DRC, where Mercy Corps and SeeSaw have implemented a digital system to monitor an extension of the city’s water network to poor areas. The rationale behind adopting a digital system will be presented, alongside the benefits sought, as well as some early lessons

Performance Of Chilean ADRs On The New York Stock Exchange

In this study, we examine NYSE-listed American Depository Receipts from Chile to determine overall short and long-term investment performance and whether the type of issue (IPO versus SEO) affects ADR performance relative to the S&P 500.  Short-term performance suggests Chilean ADRs did not perform significantly different than the market index.  However, the Chilean ADRs significantly underperformed the S&P 500 by over 32 percent during the three-year trading horizon.  In comparing long-run excess returns of SEOs versus those of IPOs, the SEO subset performed similar to the market while the IPOs significantly underperformed the market index by 45 percent.  These results provide evidence that the type of issue (IPO versus SEO) affects portfolio returns when investing in Chilean ADRs

The role of human-centred design in implementing ICT solutions in WASH projects

Over the past decade in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, there has been a continual rise in the advancement of telecommunications, as well as a continual rise in urbanisation. Within this context, a number of sector professionals have acknowledged the potential for the rapid growth in information and communication technologies (ICT) to offer new opportunities to water providers to address some of their enduring challenges. Desille and Faggianelli (2013) emphasise the importance of those both collecting and analysing information to ensure data collected is relevant and regularly updated. Unfortunately, little attention is initially given to catering these systems towards those collecting data. This paper uses lessons learned regarding appropriate and inappropriate design approaches in ICT projects in the WASH sector to showcase two case studies implemented by the social enterprise, SeeSaw. Despite SeeSaw’s attempt to incorporate the personalities, incentivise, and motivations of the reporters at the onset of the project, some challenges still remain. These results suggest both the challenges avoided when design considerations incorporate those collecting information, but also the challenges that still remain – and that future research can help clarify

Supporting private entrepreneurs to deliver public goods: engaging sanitation entrepreneurs

Despite the inclusion of sanitation in 2002 as part of the MDGs, the global backlog still grows. Current investment is heavily biased in favour of sewerage over nonnetwork forms of sanitation, yet the vast majority of urban dwellers in developing countries actually live with what is (often euphemistically) known as “onsite sanitation”. Onsite sanitation is typically seen as a household responsibility; if people want a toilet built or emptied, it is for them to find someone to do it; public agencies working on onsite sanitation are often few and far between. Smallscale providers and sanitation entrepreneurs typically fill this service gap and are very prevalent across the globe. This article reviews how the 'onsite sanitation market' functions and discusses existing roles of sanitation entrepreneurs. It identifies four areas that need exploring in order for the sanitation aspects of the MDGs to become relevant to the urban poor

Binary Central Stars of Planetary Nebulae Discovered Through Photometric Variability III: The Central Star of Abell 65

A growing number of close binary stars are being discovered among central stars of planetary nebulae. Recent and ongoing surveys are finding new systems and contributing to our knowledge of the evolution of close binary systems. The push to find more systems was largely based on early discoveries which suggested that 10 to 15% of all central stars are close binaries. One goal of this series of papers is confirmation and classification of these systems as close binaries and determination of binary system parameters. Here we provide time-resolved multi-wavelength photometry of the central star of Abell 65 as well as further analysis of the nebula and discussion of possible binary--nebula connections. Our results for Abell 65 confirm recent work showing that it has a close, cool binary companion, though several of our model parameters disagree with the recently published values. With our longer time baseline of photometric observations from 1989--2009 we also provide a more precise orbital period of 1.0037577 days.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa

Using ICT to support water sector monitoring: how underlying drivers shape incentives and outcomes

The use of new ICT tools to support water services provision is expanding rapidly. Mobile phone and web technologies are particularly being used for monitoring the performance of service providers (e.g. for data collection, the reporting of break downs or oversight of service delivery). This paper looks at some of the drivers underpinning this trend and suggests how these drivers need to be understood during the design of any ICT-based monitoring system. Our observation is that too often the focus appears to be on the tools themselves or on the ability to collect data in a different way – and not sufficiently on what the data gets used for (or how the provision of data can actually change the dynamics on the ground). As a South African based company working in the ICT and water sectors, SeeSaw has good experience of designing and adapting ICT tools to support the WASH sector – we leverage this to suggest some early lessons and to suggest a slight ‘reality check’ to the implementation and adoption of ICT – making sure that the positive contributions are not lost through poor design or over-ambitious approaches

Applying ICT to solve complex WASH challenges: insights and early lessons from the water and health sectors

There are growing expectations that harnessing ICT intelligently can bring about radical improvements in the way that health, education and other sectors function, particularly in developing countries. There is also quite some interest in the water sector, which until now has been more conservative in its innovation, with a growing recognition that these new tools can perhaps help with the institutional challenges that bedevil the water and sanitation sector. To examine experience to date – and to help the water sector learn from other sectors – two South African-based organisations active in this sphere, SeeSaw and iComms, convened a multi-disciplinary learning and sharing workshop in Cape Town in 2012. This paper summarises the background to those discussions, gives an overview of the open sharing of experience that took place, and provides some early lessons for those in the WASH sector that plan to harness some of the emerging ICT tools

Supporting survivors of sexual violence:protocol for a mixed methods, co-research study of the role, funding and commissioning of specialist services provided by the voluntary sector in England

Abstract Introduction The voluntary sector provides a range of specialist services to survivors of sexual violence, many of which have evolved from grass roots organisations responding to unmet local needs. However, the evidence base is poor in terms of what services are provided to which groups of survivors, how voluntary sector specialist (VSS) services are organised and delivered and how they are commissioned. This will be the first national study on the role of the voluntary sector in supporting survivors in England. Methods and analysis This study uses an explanatory sequential naturalistic mixed-methods design with two stages. For stage 1, two national surveys of providers’ and commissioners’ views on designing and delivering VSS services will facilitate detailed mapping of service provision and commissioning in order to create a taxonomy of VSS services. Variations in the national picture will then be explored in stage 2 through four in-depth, qualitative case studies using the critical incident technique to explain the observed variations and understand the key contextual factors which influence service provision. Drawing on theory about the distinctive service contribution of the voluntary sector, survivors will be involved as co-researchers and will play a central role in data collection and interpretation. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval has been granted by the University of Birmingham research ethics committee for stage 1 of the project. In line with the sequential and co-produced study design, further applications for ethical review will be made in due course. Dissemination activities will include case study and end-of-project workshops; good practice guides; a policy briefing; project report; bitesize findings; webinars; academic articles and conference presentations. The project will generate evidence about what survivors want from and value about services and new understanding about how VSS services should be commissioned and provided to support survivors to thrive in the long term

Strategic responses to global challenges: The case of European banking, 1973–2000

In applying a strategy, structure, ownership and performance (SSOP) framework to three major clearing banks (ABN AMRO, UBS, Barclays), this article debates whether the conclusions generated by Whittington and Mayer about European manufacturing industry can be applied to the financial services sector. While European integration plays a key role in determining strategy, it is clear that global factors were far more important in determining management actions, leading to significant differences in structural adaptation. The article also debates whether this has led to improved performance, given the problems experienced with both geographical dispersion and diversification, bringing into question the quality of decision-making over the long term

Food availability as a major driver in the evolution of life-history strategies of sibling species.

Life-history theory predicts trade-offs between reproductive and survival traits such that different strategies or environmental constraints may yield comparable lifetime reproductive success among conspecifics. Food availability is one of the most important environmental factors shaping developmental processes. It notably affects key life-history components such as reproduction and survival prospect. We investigated whether food resource availability could also operate as an ultimate driver of life-history strategy variation between species. During 13 years, we marked and recaptured young and adult sibling mouse-eared bats (Myotis myotis and Myotis blythii) at sympatric colonial sites. We tested whether distinct, species-specific trophic niches and food availability patterns may drive interspecific differences in key life-history components such as age at first reproduction and survival. We took advantage of a quasi-experimental setting in which prey availability for the two species varies between years (pulse vs. nonpulse resource years), modeling mark-recapture data for demographic comparisons. Prey availability dictated both adult survival and age at first reproduction. The bat species facing a more abundant and predictable food supply early in the season started its reproductive life earlier and showed a lower adult survival probability than the species subjected to more limited and less predictable food supply, while lifetime reproductive success was comparable in both species. The observed life-history trade-off indicates that temporal patterns in food availability can drive evolutionary divergence in life-history strategies among sympatric sibling species