Venkatraman Ramakrishna

Municipal Solid Waste Quantification, Characterization and Management in Mylavaram

Proper quantification and characterization are essential for successful solid waste management. Proper segregation, collection, recovery and systematic disposal are very rarely followed in India, particularly in rural areas. Solid waste management in Mylavaram, a Panchayat in Krishna district, AP is considered in the present study and examined the scope for improvement. Presently, there is no proper implementation of solid waste management practises in Mylavaram except for collection of solid wastes and dumping in two sites outside Mylavaram. Systematic studies are conducted in Mylavaram for quantification, determination of composition, study of route analysis and recovery value from solid wastes. Mylavaram is generating 6000 kg/day of solid waste with per capita waste generation of 0.27 kg/day, 71% food wastes with average density of 302 kg/m 3 , moisture content of 70% and estimated methane gas generation of 253m 3 /tonne of waste. Due to high biodegradable content (4260 kg/day), compost and biogas generation options are studied. Optimum distribution of biodegradable solid waste among these two options is studied. A combination of 2.86 tonnes for composting and 1.4 tonnes for landfilling with net recovery of Rs 7552 per day and Rs 1547 per day from recovery of paper and plastic respectively with a total recovery of Rs27.5 lakhs per year is suggested. This revenue is excluding the construction and operation cost incurred for establishment of compost plant and landfill biogas collection system. In case, biogas is not extracted, a total of 4 hectares land is required to dump the above 1.4 tonnes/day and the residual solid waste generated in Mylavaram. The revenue expected will be only Rs 16.61 lakhs which is obtained from composting and recovery of paper and plastic. Existing route analysis is studied and improvements are suggested to reduce the number of trips of collection.

A platform for end-to-end mobile application infrastructure analytics using system log correlation

Monitoring and analyzing the performance of mobile applications is challenging when the applications rely on remote services and functioning networks. Root causes of failures and performance anomalies of client–server applications are difficult to pinpoint because of their distributed nature. In this paper, we introduce the Mobile Infrastructure Analytics System (MIAS), which helps efficiently detect and debug application faults in a distributed environment, holistically analyzing application and network activity across client devices, application servers, database servers, etc. MIAS collects hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) session data and system logs from servers and instrumented mobile applications, automatically correlates HTTP sessions with server activity, detects anomalous behavior using statistical techniques, and extracts a small and relevant set of log entries for manual inspection. We show how faults were detected and root causes pinpointed just by glancing at the evidence, for a real-world bookstore mobile application.

An Un-tethered Mobile Shopping Experience

Smart phones with access to apps from online stores are ideal candidates to replace expensive hardware like Point-of-Sale terminals for retail. A standard set of shopper and retailer apps can replace the conventional retailer IT setup in settings ranging from rural areas with low connectivity to dense urban areas. We describe how we built such a set of apps for mobile shoppers and retailers equipped only with smart phones and tablets, and who require little to no training to use them. These apps are flexible enough to be used by small shops with small inventories as well as large grocery chains. Our apps enable retailers to manage their inventories and finances, and shoppers to discover retailers, match shopping lists, and make purchases. We describe how we conducted a user study of retailers in North India to ascertain their needs, and to understand the ecosystem in emerging markets. This helped us build a mobile shopping platform that can support a range of transactional scenarios.

Privacy Preserving Social Mobile Applications

Mobile users can obtain a wide range of services by maintaining associations, and sharing location and social context, with service providers. But multiple associations are cumbersome to maintain, and sharing private information with untrusted providers is risky. Using a trusted broker to mediate interactions by managing interfaces, user identities, context, social network links, policies, and enabling cross-domain associations, results in more privacy and reduced management burden for users, as we show in this paper. We also describe the prototype implementations of two practically useful applications that require awareness of participants’ location and social context: (i) targeted advertising, and (ii) social network-assisted online purchases.