Workshops/Demos/Panels

See Workshops / Demos / Panels

GHTC 2014 Workshop Sessions – Saturday October 11, 4:00 – 6:00 pm

GHTC 2014 Workshop Sessions – Sunday October 12, 10:30 am-12:30 pm

GHTC 2014 Workshop Sessions – Monday October 12, 10:30 am-12:30 pm

GHTC 2014 Panel Sessions – Sunday 4:00 – 6:00 pm

GHTC 2014 Demo Sessions – Saturday & Sunday

Disaster Response and Emergency Vehicles Demonstration (Outdoors) – Sunday October 12, 1:30 – 5:00 pm

Workshop Abstracts

C2 – Frontiers of Humanitarian Engineering: Learning from Social Justice, Feminism,
and Failure

Brent Jesiek*, Andrea Mazzurco, Julia Thompson, Purdue University; Jane Lehr, Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo; Juan Lucena, Colorado School of Mines;

Engineering holds considerable promise to address global humanitarian challenges. Yet paradoxically, many cutting-edge development projects and initiatives fall far short of their potential, all too often leaving behind disappointed stakeholders and new social and/or environmental problems. This interactive workshop poses thought-provoking questions such as: Among many possible factors, to what extent do sociocultural considerations make or break humanitarian engineering projects? What counts as socially and ethically responsible humanitarian engineering practice, and what training is necessary to enable it? The facilitators will offer concepts, frameworks, and examples drawn from and organized around three overlapping, complimentary themes: social justice, feminism, and failure. Through interactive case studies and lessons culled from both the literature and panelists’ experiences, attendees will be invited to explore opportunities for intensified dialogue, collaboration, and mutual learning amongst humanitarian technical professionals, humanists, social scientists, community members/organizers, and other relevant stakeholders. The facilitators will share evidence from their own efforts to study challenges and opportunities that surface when engineers are challenged to rethink how they define and solve problems when working with developing communities. While this workshop most closely aligns with the Humanitarian Challenges and Opportunities track, it will highlight insights and lessons that cut across the five tracks.

C5 –  EPICS in IEEE Workshop

Nicholas J. Kirsch, University of New Hampshire

Abstract:

The workshop will include an overview of IEEE’s implementation of the Engineering Projects In Community Service (EPICS) in IEEE Program. The EPICS in IEEE program fosters partnerships between university students to work with non-profit organizations to deliver technical solutions to local communities. The overview will include examples of successful partnerships from around the globe. Following the overview, attendees will participate in an interactive session focused on developing a proposal/petition for funding, followed by a presentation on next steps.

Presenter:

Nicholas J. Kirsch (S’00-M’09) obtained his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in May 2003. Nicholas received an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications in June 2006 and a Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering in June 2009 from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2001 and 2002, Nicholas worked for W.L. Gore & Associates and in graduate school, he worked in the Drexel Wireless Systems Laboratory and the Applied Communication and Information Networking group in Camden, NJ. Beginning in 2009, he joined the faculty at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH. He is currently as Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Director of UNH Wireless Laboratory. Kirsch’s work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, IEEE, and private industry. His current research interests are Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications systems, cognitive and software defined radios, spectrum sensing and sensor networks, and transparent antennas.

In 2013, Kirsch successfully started an Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) in IEEE project in collaboration with St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Dover, NH and The Nature Conservancy of New Hampshire. He is now serving on the EPICS in IEEE committee.

IEEE SIGHT Workshop:creating local impact

Niru Prakash Kumar

Kartik Kulkarni

Alfredo Herrara

Anand B

Holly S Brown

Bios:

Nirupama (Niru) Prakash Kumar is heavily involved with IEEE and is currently an Ambassador for IEEE’s Community Solutions Initiative (CSI), a signature program of the IEEE Foundation. She is helping CSI with strategies for women entrepreneurship based rural electrification projects in India. She also serves on the IEEE SIGHT Steering Committee. In the past she has served on IEEE’s Humanitarian Ad Hoc Committee whose primary responsibility is to set direction and policies for IEEE member engagement in Humanitarian activities. She has also served as IEEE’s Region 6 (Western US, Alaska and Hawaii) Women in Engineering coordinator helping set up various women in engineering groups for the benefit of IEEE women engineers and also for helping in K12 outreach efforts for engineering. Her interests include the most cost effective methods of making technology accessible to the ‘forgotten billion’ of the world. Niru has an undergraduate degree in power systems engineering, MS in Energy Systems from the University of Washington, and MBA from Cornell University where she was recognized both as an ‘Environmental Finance and Impact Investing Fellow’ as well as an ‘Emerging Markets Fellow’. She has worked at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and recently joined WindLogics, a NextEra Energy company as a Sr. Operations Engineer where she is looking at building systems that can enable greater renewable energy integration into the energy mix.

Kartik Kulkarni chairs the IEEE Special Interest Groups on Humanitarian Technology (SIGHT) Steering Committee. He works for Oracle Corporation’s Data and In-memory Technology Group in Redwood City, USA. In 2009, Kartik led his team winning IEEE Presidents’ Change the World Competition for the project – Electronic Aids for physically and mentally challenged children. Kartik believes that IEEE, being the community of 450,000+ Engineers in 160+ countries, can be a strong global taskforce of volunteers committed to championing technology solutions for development and solving community problems. This taskforce if oriented and channeled could produce local community leaders in important efforts such as activism, awareness, advocacy, and deployment of technology based solutions.

Alfredo Herrera is an electrical engineer with over 16 years of experience in digital design and verification (ASIC/FPGA), radio system performance verification, technical project management and manufacturing test engineering. He is a senior radio performance verification engineer at Ericsson, and he is experienced in measurement and automation of multi-standard software defined cellular radios. Alfredo is currently finalizing a Master degree in Systems Science and his thesis in on Open Source Hardware for human development at the University of Ottawa.

Anand B is an Entrepreneur and is the Co-founder & Director of Trentz Interactive Services Private Limited. Prior to this, he was working as Projects Analysis & Management Lead for Innovation eXperience. He is an Electrical & Electronics Engineer by education, who is primarily interested in social innovation models and technologies that can enable equitable socio-economic developments. Anand has organized and volunteered for about 125+ events with IEEE and received 15+ recognitions and various prestigious awards for his outstanding leadership & services to IEEE. He has also received other awards like IEEE Region 10 Humanitarian Technology Activities Project Award & IEEE Region 10 Student Paper Award.

Holly Schneider Brown is Program Manager, Corporate Activities at IEEE, where she supports the Humanitarian Ad Hoc Committee (HAHC), including the Special Interest Groups on Humanitarian Technology (SIGHT) Steering Committee. She is the program manager of the Engineering for Change (E4C) Webinar Series and serves on the advisory committee for the Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC) 2013. Holly holds a BA from Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY and an MA from the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. With over 10 years of professional experience in program and project management, Holly is the IEEE staff lead in developing and executing the SIGHT program.

F5-2 – Workshop: Micro-grid: Examples and Discussion

Moderator: Nathan Johnson, Polytechnic School, Arizona State University

Microgrids are becoming an increasingly common means for providing electricity to villages, peri-urban areas, hospitals, businesses and industrial parks. Early applications of microgrids provided power to off-grid villages away from a centralized electric grid, with more recent applications in sections of a centralized grid that experience poor power quality or outages. Much of this growth has been driven by declining costs of renewables and storage, increasing costs of grid electricity and fossil fuel, and new power electronics and controls technologies. Please join us in a town hall discussion of recent advancements and examples of microgrids.

G3-1 – Workshop: Safety and Security for Healthcare Workers in West Africa

Facilitator: Eric Rasmussen

As of 05 October the Ebola crisis has infected more than 8,000 people and killed more than 4,000 in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. The medical support staff in those countries have also suffered enormous losses, with more than 700 healthcare workers infected and more than 300 dead of the disease. The White House and USAID have scheduled an all-day meeting and second-day workshop on 10-11 October on the topic “How can we improve the safety and security of healthcare workers in the Ebola Crisis”.

IEEE GHTC speaker Dr. Eric Rasmussen was selected by the White House for that set of Friday and Saturday meetings, and will be flying directly from DC to this GHTC meeting the day after, bringing an understanding of Ebola crisis needs and opportunities into this Monday workshop. Dr. Rasmussen will establish a brief foundation and context, then describe the specific problems under evaluation, discuss briefly some of the options suggested in DC, and then start a deeper conversation around what else might be done, and why, and how. Please join us.

Panel Abstracts

F1-1 – Human Trafficking: Research Perspectives on Challenges and Opportunities for Innovation

Nicole Bryan*, Montclair State University; Rane Johnson, Microsoft Research; Sasha Poucki, ; Sue McIntyre, ; Mary Leary,

Microsoft Research and Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit have partnered in spearheading research on the relationship between technology and human trafficking. The results reveal unexpected findings that highlight a more complex and nuanced ecosystem than originally hypothesized. The messiness of the relationship between technology and trafficking provides reason for caution and underscores the need for a holistic approach to viable, ethical and sustainable technological solutions.

As more technologists want to get involved in this field, we want to share learning on best practices and engage in open dialogue on how to create a viable way forward for technological innovation in this space. The panel seeks to share examples of well-intentioned efforts that may cause more harm than good and spark new conversation around responsible technological innovation. Our aim is to stimulate dialogue around how to ask the right questions to understand the areas in which technological disruptions can better enable or facilitate the decrease in human trafficking while ensuring those who are vulnerable or at risk for victimization are not harmed in the process. We invite participants to join us in an interactive discussion on how to work across sectors to make a difference and learn from other global humanitarian efforts.

This session will share insights and findings from academic researchers and practitioners engaged in research on the role of technology in human trafficking. The session is explicitly interdisciplinary and interactive; it seeks to engage the audience in active problem solving around challenges and opportunities for creating responsible intervention to combat human trafficking through technological innovation. The panelists will discuss research conducted in collaboration with experts in computer science, business, ethics, law, social psychology and human rights. It is designed to spark a new conversation, stimulate audience interaction and share lessons learned.

The panel chair is Rane Johnson-Stempson, Principal Research Director of Microsoft Research Outreach. The panelists include Nicole Bryan, Director of CSR in the School of Business at Montclair State University, Mary Leary, Director of the Experiential Curriculum and Associate Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America and Sasha Poucki, Research Fellow in Management at Montclair State University. The panelists will discuss findings from research funded by Microsoft Research and the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit.

F2-1 – Using Technology to Bring Biomedical Innovations to Emerging Markets

Jitendra Mudhol, CollaMeta; Terry Mandel*, BioMedLink; Kevin Montgomery, Collaborate.org; Dan Desmond, SIMI Group

Emerging markets and Bottom of Pyramid (BoP) sectors involve tremendous challenges and opportunities to Biomedical innovators. WHO reports that in sub-Saharan Africa, up to 70% of medical equipment stands idle due to lack of power, water, supplies, training and tech-support. A UN report estimates that by 2025, people 60 and older will represent more than 15% of the total population, using disproportionate amount of health resources. The big challenges include regulation, distribution, access and affordability. The opportunity here is to disrupt a $90 Billion market that has 3 Billion customers. The discussion will focus on the role Technology can play to address some of these challenges.

Moderator: Jitendra Mudhol, Founder, CollaMeta

Panelists:
Terry Mandel, Founder and CEO, BioMedLink
Dan Desmond, Consultant, The SIMI Group
Kevin Montgomery, Senior Researcher, Center for Innovation in Global Health, Stanford University School of Medicine

Demo Abstracts

C1-1 – NASA Solutions using Satellites to Improve Environmental Management: Navigating Earth Science/Earth Observation Data and Information Resources

Sarah Hemmings*, NASA; Nancy Searby, NASA; Christine Lee, ; David Toll, NASA; Ana Prados,

The Capacity Building Program within the NASA Applied Sciences Program (Earth Science Division), focuses on building skills and capabilities to apply Earth science and Earth Observations towards societal benefit across the nine thematic areas supported by the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO): agriculture, biodiversity, climate, disasters, ecosystems, energy, health, water, and weather. This presentation will demonstrate various Earth science and Earth Observation tools, resources, training materials, portals, and data/information products that can be used for environmental monitoring and in some cases, decision-making, in developing country contexts. The goal of the demonstration is to empower and assist the IEEE-GHTC community in navigating the wealth of Earth science information services that are freely and publicly available from NASA and its partners. The presentation will also provide an overview of opportunities to learn more about Earth Observations and how people can use these valuable Earth science assets in environmental monitoring and decision-making.

C1-2 -Autonomous Modular Multi-rotor Aerial Vehicle as First Responder

NiMA Asghari*, IKW, University of Osnabrück; Amin Abouee, Technical University of Munich; Seyed Jalal alddin Khademi Kolahbakhsh, TU Darmstadt

Only in the past few years over 500 people have gone overboard from seaworthy vessels. Often these vessels are far from shore. An unmanned aerial vehicle as marine first responder can act in a timely manner to help rescue individuals in danger of drowning. The vehicle can provide an eye in the sky to help in the search and rescue of the individual overboard. The robot through the use of computer vision, can pinpoint and track overboard individuals in the water. In our current prototype, we are using off the shelf parts to build a modular waterproof buoyant frame for the multi-rotor. The battery endurance is maximized by using high-torque low-rpm brushless DC motors. A dock mounted charging station using tethers is currently under development for real world testing. Note: we’d like to hold a workshop/seminar session to demo our prototype and get feedback from the audience for further developments.

C3-1 – WLAN Communication Prototype as a Contingency network for Natural Disasters

Andres Astudillo*, IEEE

The communication systems, are highly affected in case of some specific problems such as natural disasters like a tornado, an earthquake or electricity shortage. In those cases, communication buildings are suffering as they are moving or shaken, leaving the network services and power systems useless. Finally, people who are in those affected areas are trying to reestablish a communication but all at the same time with often the consequence of an overload in the network system. In the case of an earthquake disaster for example, where buildings are collapsing or moving and people are trapped inside, it is hard for them to release the rubbles. It is then necessary to develop different communications ways in order to allow the affected people to share valuable informations such as their health state, geoposition, temperature, humidity and even the carbon dioxide levels, among others environmental variables. All of this is aiming to improve and save the time used for the rescuer trying to save them, as time is perhaps the most critical variable in natural disasters. Due to the quick advance of science and technology, smartphones and smart terminals have seen their prices reduced considerably, making them affordable for everyone. This is also another reason why it is now possible to develop a portable, self-sustain energy system and a low budget prototype allowing the communication between terminals. It will be used in emergency cases, creating a community network for help and rescue.

C3-2 – Communicating in Disasters: A Ten-Year Experience with Interactive Demo by HumaniNet

Gregg Swanson*, HumaniNet

One of the most critical elements in disaster response is reliable communications. In sudden-onset emergencies, especially major natural disasters, infrastructure is usually damaged, causing severe degradation or elimination of cell phone and landline communications. In these situations, both in the U.S. and in global emergencies, the fastest and most reliable solution for relief teams and responders is mobile satellite communications. This includes satellite phones and lightweight terminals that provide voice, text messaging, email, full Internet. Executive Director Gregg Swanson will present case studies from actual disasters and discuss best practices from the field. Attendees may participate in an interactive demo of these capabilities, using three types of satellite devices. Communications planning for emergencies is essential, but often overlooked. The case studies will address the primary failures and shortcomings in different scenarios and will suggest some easy steps to evaluate team requirements. The session will also address experiences in conflict regions where personnel security and team effectiveness depend upon dependable satellite communications. Since 2002, HumaniNet has assisted relief teams, responders, and government agencies in numerous emergencies, including the 2004 South Asia tsunami, the Haiti earthquake, Hurricane Katrina and the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami.

F3-1 – Changing How Technology & Information Is Used During Humanitarian Challenges

Mark Parker*, Smart Selling International

During times of humanitarian challenges or natural disasters information is often slow, inflexible, out of date, or difficult to understand. Yet information can reassure, calm, and empower a community. The concept that I have created will improve how information is generated, gathered and used and hence improve rescue and relief outcomes. By combining social collaboration with augmented reality in a mobile app, we will improve how relief resources are deployed and ensure people can help themselves and those around them Consider this scenario: Joe has survived a major storm and needs to get to a relief centre. He has a vehicle and some supplies; he enters this detail into the app, which nominates a safe route based on real-time data that is being supplied by an aide agency (or Government response agency). The AR feature in the app alerts Jo that another local – Ann has medical expertise but low mobility; the app arranges a meet point with Joe. Both get to safety and the agency logs both movements and Ann’s expertise availability. The app will optimise how local resources are used, and provide new, rich, real-time insights for aide agencies. Importantly, human behaviour is now a shared data source that will improve macro and micro-level decision-making, information flow and response outcomes. Whilst the app is still a concept it is unique and also scalable for a number of reasons. 1. It is a combination of both existing technologies and emerging technologies that will improve existing practices. 2. The concept will create new ways to manage resources, particularly micro-resources. 3. Scalability risk decreases as adoption and use increases. Finally, the solution will be built under an open-source framework. This creates opportunities wide collaboration.

F3-2 – Mobile Training Toolkit (MTT): A Comprehensive and Sustainable Capacity Building Approach for Solar PV Energy Technologies

Bülent Bicer*, Arizona State University

Within the last 20 years, many capacity building initiatives in the developing world on renewable energy technologies have proved to be less effective and practically unsustainable due to the lack of (1) practical and hands-on training materials, complementing theoretical classroom training; (2) integration into the existing educational framework; and (3) training infrastructure for renewable energy within this educational framework. For the past few years, Arizona State University (ASU) has been implementing a highly successful and innovative Vocational Training and Education on Clean Energy (VOCTEC) program in many developing regions in the world. To meet these objectives in a sustainable manner, ASU has developed a complete, portable “out-of-the-box” training center on solar PV technologies (aka Mobile Training Toolkit – MTT) to enable those institutions and their instructors to train technicians and students on the fundamentals, installation, operations and maintenance of solar PV energy systems both, on-campus or on remote communities in a practical and comprehensive way. Nearly 50 MTT units have been produced and integrated into the training infrastructure of educational institutions in the Asia, Africa and the Pacific.

F4-1 – New Zealand Red Cross “Succinct Data” Communication System

Matthew Lloyd*, New Zealand Red Cross

In the past New Zealand Red Cross has had a successful project donating “disaster proof” Iridium satellite phones to Pacific Island Red Cross Societies. Operationally they were a great success but the running costs were a burden. Consequently NZRC has designed a communication system, now at the initial field testing stage, based upon Android smart phones, that can communicate independent of cellular infrastructure, using Wi Fi mesh (Project Serval) and satellite text (Iridium SBD, DeLorme’s InReach device). The result is a tough, inexpensive, very portable, and path diverse system that can collect, collate, analyse and display disaster assessment data very shortly after collection. As well as managing and tracking personnel in the field. NZRC would like to make a presentation followed by a hands on demonstration.

10/05/2014 02:30PM