Arun Pande

Late Blight Forecast Using Mobile Phone Based Agro Advisory System

The late blight disease is the most common disease in potato, which is caused by the pathogen Phytopthora infestans. In this paper, a novel method to collect symptoms of the disease, as observed by the farmers, using a mobile phone application has been presented. A cumulative composite risk index (CCRI) obtained from more than one existing disease forecast models is validated from the actual late blight queries received from the farmers. The main contribution of the paper is a protocol that combines the symptoms based diagnostic approach along with the plant disease forecasting models resulting in detection of Potato late blight with higher accuracy. This in turn reduces the disease risk along with avoiding the unnecessary application of fungicide.

SMS based natural language interface to yellow pages directory

Yellow Pages are directories that source information about various commercial organizations like their addresses, phone contact and other details. These are very useful and are used by individual and other business houses. Until recently, the only way to access these yellow pages directory information was to physically look into a huge hard-copy directory, which was not only laborious but also time consuming and required the user to be familiar with the organization of the directory. More recently, there have been IVR based contact centers that have been set up which can be used by the users to query information. While it is easier than browsing through the physical directory, it still has several pitfalls. The time spent on trying to get the information is quite long and at the end of enquiry one is not sure if one will get the information that one is looking for. In this paper, we propose a novel interface which enables accessing the yellow pages directory information on the mobile phone by sending a short message service (SMS). The central idea of the proposed method is to avoid any constraint on the way the user can query the yellow pages directory except that it be in natural English. The system, which uses natural language processing (NLP) techniques, understands the intent of the query and intelligently searches the yellow pages directory to retrieve information. This retrieved information is then sent back to the user in the form of a SMS.

Event based experiential computing in agro-advisory system for rural farmers

In our earlier proposed mKRISHI framework, which is a mobile phone based agriculture advisory system, a farmer can record a query with the help of audio-visual interface on the mobile phone application. The multi-modal sensory devices have been deployed to capture the context of the farm so that the query along with the context are presented to the agriculture expert at the web console for the investigation. In this paper, we propose an event based experiential computing approach for agro-advisory services. The classification and modeling of agricultural events, modeling of the agricultural experiences, and a method to browse through the history of agriculture experiences are the key contributions in the present work.

mHEALTHPHC: An ICT Tool for Primary Healthcare in India

Access to timely, quality healthcare is one of the important issues concerning communities in rural India, among many others such as education, safe drinking water, transport, approach roads, and electricity. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has made a significant impact on the functioning of enterprises and urban communities; however, the benefits of ICT are yet to reach rural communities. This article describes how an innovative ICT tool called “mHEALTHPrimary Health Care” (mHEALTH-PHC) can be used to meet the primary healthcare requirements of the community. The MHEALTH-PHC tool was developed after studying the needs and the logistic problems related to primary healthcare of the rural tribal population of villages in India.

Distributed processing and internet technology to solve challenges of primary healthcare in india

National Reproductive and Child Health program, focused on Mother and Child Health, part of Millennium Developmental Goals, is being implemented through Primary Health Centers of the Public Healthcare System. The health record generated through community health interventions are manual, leading to undue delay in diagnosis and emergency care. In this paper, we show how Distributed Processing and Internet Technology can be applied through innovative platform called mHEALTH-PHC, to provide timely, quality healthcare to remote population using existing infrastructure. mHEALTH-PHC combines client server, cellular, mobile phone technologies and medical test equipment to establish two way connection between patient in a village and Public Healthcare System. Our field study shows that mHEALTH-PHC can be effective in health surveillance, thereby leading to prompt, efficient, quality healthcare. We take the consortium approach involving IT and Public Health experts, Directorate of Health Services, pharmaceutical and health insurance industries, to make quality healthcare affordable and sustainable.

Human participatory sensing in fixed route bus information system

In urban areas, a large population relies on buses with fixed route for commuting within a town. However, in most of the developing and underdeveloped countries, real-time bus arrival time information is still unavailable to the commuters. This is mainly due to the difficulty in installation and maintenance of existing infrastructure based solutions like Global Positioning System or Radio Frequency Identification system. In the present paper, we propose a human participatory instantaneous bus location information system, which relies on the ubiquity of mobile phones and on human participation in an opportunistic manner. We further propose an algorithm to estimate bus arrival time at different stops on the route. The localization and arrival time information is then provided to the commuters, either in response to their query or in the form of alerts. We believe that the proposed system can be made self sustainable by providing appropriate incentives to the commuters in lieu of localization of the buses. The provision of real time bus information can become an important incentive.

Innovation for crop quality certification using ICT

The focus of Indian agriculture so far has been on meeting the national demand, however it is going through a steady transformation phase to address the global requirement and is being driven by consumers and markets. According to APEDA Agriexchange portal, every year our country suffers more than 17000 Cr losses because consignments get rejected [1]. There is a growing concern for the food quality and scrutiny of the food supply chain [2] due to increased use of pesticides and its impact on health [3]. As a result, awareness of the importance of safe food is rapidly increasing among the consumers worldwide. Global standards like Global GAP (Good Agriculture Practices) [4], Better Cotton Initiative, RTRS (Round Table Responsible Soy) etc. have evolved with the collaborative efforts of growers, industry experts, researchers and retailers around the globe. These certifications contain standardized processes for producing fresh food resulting in good quality and environment sustainability. These mostly involve audit and documentation processes, in English, with Site Inspectors and Auditors visiting the field and recording their observations on paper. Hence the scalability is a challenge and the adoption is low.