Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
Mobile phone applications
Karl Morteo
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
What is a mobile phone application?
Any information system that uses a mobile
phone.
From a simple informational text message
to a full blown application running on your
phone.
From web application accessed though a
phone to a custom client server application
to a local application with no storage.
So now we have narrowed the scope down :-)
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
Mobile phone application difficulties?
Rapidly evolving technology.
Competing standards.
Caught between the ICT giants.
Massive diversity of phones old and new.
Mobile phone applications are potentially very
expensive to develop and support
so why bother?
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
Why bother with a mobile phone application?
Timeliness of data
Accessibility/availability of data
Accuracy of data
Extra data from (cell location/GPS,
photo/video/sound, bar code reader)
User base/Crowd
Cost
Superior to computer – portability, easy, network
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
AGA Animal Disease Tracking System / EMPRES-i
AGP Desert locust - Keith Cressman
AGP Locust surveillance (Mauritania to India)
AGP Monitoring multiplication sites - cassava disease (Central Africa)
AGP Large scale pest reporting (Uganda/Tanzania)
AGP Pesticide Tracking from customs to use and disposal
CIO HQ Phone Book
CIO HQ Security Guard System
CIO Statistical Data Warehouse Browser – Karl Morteo
EASY Pol (Mobile banking) – Don’t have own app.
ECTAD Viet Nam Animal Disease Alerts (Bird Flu)
EST Market Price
FOE Forestry publicity iPhone App – Lauren Flejzor
FOM Forestry Inventory – In progress - Gino Miceli
NR/FO Advanced Fire Information System - SMS Alert - John Latham
TCE DPT (Crop Pests) – Phil Fong
TCE DPT SADC (Animal Disease) – Phil Fong
TCE Emergency? Antonio Stocchi
TCE/AGA Bangladesh SMS Gateway (Animal Disease) - Mat Yamage
TCI Farmers Field School Monitoring System – Takayuki Hagiwara
TCI Rural Invest - Aidan Gulliver
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
SMS Gateway data collection in Bangladesh
Bangladesh is conducting active Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) surveillance. A total of 450
Community Animal Health Workers (CAHW), 50 Additional Veterinary Surgeons (AVS) and 150 Upazilla
Livestock Officers (ULOs) are using Short Message Service (SMS) gateway to collect data and report on
disease and death in poultry. The programme has detected HPAI outbreaks.
The SMS reporting structure is simple: at the end of the working day, each
CAHW sends a SMS message with the total number of all investigated
poultry (chickens, ducks and other birds) and their health status (the
number of sick and dead birds) to the SMS gateway system.
This data is used to; A) monitor trends in disease and mortality in poultry, and B) monitor who is working
that day. Additionally, CAHWs send flash reports by SMS on suspected outbreaks according to a case
definition. The system then automatically contacts the ULO in the same area by SMS, who initiates an
investigation by sending an AVS or visits the suspect outbreaks him/herself. After the investigation, the
ULOs and AVS send a SMS message to the gateway server to declare the suspect outbreak as negative or
report that it may require further (diagnostic) tests. Initially a Gateway server receiving these messages was
located at the Department of Livestock Services in Dhaka, the capital. Currently the system is internet
based. Specialised staff monitor the change in mortality and morbidity rates and perform spatial and
temporal analysis against concurrent HPAI outbreaks and monitor the number of suspect cases and the
results of the ULOs and AVS investigations. The result of the analysis is submitted to the Chief Veterinary
Officer, used in workshops to sensitise staff and farmers, donor meetings as well as in periodic project
reporting. This real-time reporting using SMS has been contributing to effective HPAI outbreak response
and control. The key to the success may be its simple approach and clearly defined work-sharing by using
familiar tools (mobile phones).
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
DPT for Animal Health and Crop Pest
Surveillance
The digital pen user transfers data
after it has been temporarily stored
in the pen, either:
Wirelessly: by ticking a box on the
paper, interpreted by the pen as a
“send” command, the pen will use
Bluetooth to instantly send data via
a mobile phone
Via a USB port: pens connect to
any PC
Sent data is in proprietary Anoto
PGC format and can either be
handled locally or routed to the
application server associated with
that specific paper form for further
processing.
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
DPT for Large scale pest reporting (Uganda/Tanzania)
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Locust
surveillance
(Mauritania to India)
Mobile Phone
Applications
problem: how to survey rapidly changing
Desert Locust upsurges in remote areas, to
plan locust control campaigns?
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
GFIMS Global Fire Alert
The Fire Email Alerts is the
GFIMS open source alert service
that notifies registered users of
MODIS-derived active fires in a
specified area-of-interest.
The user subscription information
includes their area of interest, alert
frequency (daily/weekly/near realtime), delivery preferences (textonly, image and text), etc. The
email alert includes a summary of
number of fires detected and
tabular list of fires.
Daily and Weekly fire alerts are
sent from the GFIMS system,
whereas near real-time alerts are
sent directly from the MODIS Rapid
Response (MRR) facility to avoid
any additional delays in caused by
relaying the data from the MRR to
the GFIMS servers.
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
Distributing food vouchers in the form of mobile
phone text messages
http://www.wfp.org/stories/mobile-phonesdeliver-food-iraqi-refugees
PDAs or SMS data transmission for faster
and more reliable monitoring of food
security.
The data collected includes both food
security baseline data and food insecurity
indicators. The bulk of WFP's data collected
focuses on nutritional indicators, market
prices, import, cross border trades,
socioeconomic indicators, and health
indicators
PDA-based data collection tool "allows very
large questionnaires to be built very rapidly
and deployed onto many PDAs using flash
memory cards
http://sites.google.com/site/wfppdasurvey/
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
Checkmyschool.org maps information on
public education services in the Philippines
By simply clicking on a particular
school on the GPS map, citizens
can obtain information about
specific aspects of school
performance – including number of
teachers, condition of facilities,
student achievements, status of
nutritional health programs, and
more.
The information is fed into the georeferencing database by local
school monitors who send in realtime data via their cell phones
using SMS text messaging.
Some 8,000 public schools in the
Philippines are currently on the
site, and the number is expected to
grow quickly in the coming
months.
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
The Ushahidi Platform allows anyone to
gather distributed data via SMS, email or
web and visualize it on a map or timeline.
Our goal is to create the simplest way of
aggregating information from the public for
use in crisis response.
Also a server for FrontlineSMS including
SwiftRiver a free and open source software
that uses algorithms and crowd sourcing to
validate and filter news.
http://haitiaidmap.org/
http://ushahidi.com/
Data can be collected using multiple
mobile phones using the EpiCollect mobile
app(Android / iPhone ) and all data can be
synchronised from the phones and viewed
centrally (using Google Maps) via the
Project website or directly on the phones.
http://www.epicollect.net/
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
The World Bank DataFinder
The World Bank DataFinder app for
iPhone/iPad, which provides 50 years
of indicator data in your pocket, is now
available. The app takes advantage of
the DataFinder APIs to chart and
visualize indicator data, and makes it
easy to share what you find with
colleagues.
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
The OECD Factbook App
The OECD Factbook App presents 100
economic indicators in a format
specially designed for your iPhone.
Now, wherever you are, you have easy
access to a comprehensive statistical
picture of the world’s major economies
from the most reliable source: OECD.
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
So you need a mobile phone application
Considerations
Who will use the application?
The application criticality
The Target Phones
The Network Connectivity
Usability and user acceptance
Reliability
Data ownership and privacy concerns
The mobile phone needs to communicate..
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
Who will use the application?
Specialists – assessment/inventory.
Clerks, data gathers - census.
Service deliverers - extension workers,
customs.
End users, farmers - counterfeit
prevention
General public – crowd.
Training requirements?
Support requirements?
Sustainability?
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
The application criticality
Continuously essential to carry out job
function.
Periodically required to carry out job
function.
More efficiently/effectively/conveniently
carry out job function.
Keep informed.
For publicity, awareness, entertainment.
In the event of disaster are there any alternatives to using the application?
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
The Target Phones
Specified exact model.
Known possible models.
Specify minimum compatible models.
Almost any model.
Who purchases/owns the phones? pays the running costs?
Limited to FAO users? Sustainability?
The diversity of target phones that must be supported greatly
influences the development approach.
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
The Network Connectivity
Can vary from continuously available high
speed internet to occasionally available
SMS only, peer-to-peer or snail mail of
SD-Cards.
Unreliable/mixed network requires more information to be saved and
cached locally and complex programming to synchronize or get the
information off the phone
Caching, synchronization, multi user, data integrity, conflict locking
Multimodal transfers: GPRS, WiFi, SMS, and USB tether
Packetisation for large data
Who pays the running costs? Sustainability? I blew all the credit
calling my girl friend because it picked up the GSM from neighboring
country.
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
Usability and user acceptance
Is the application user friendly and
intuitive? Does it replace an existing ?
How can I correct my mistaken data entry.
You need the patience of a saint to use this application.
My fingers are too big and my eyesight too poor.
I don’t have the time to complete all that information in the field. The
old paper and telephone was much faster and the secretary
corrected it.
It requires on site data entry for geo-coordinate sake but there is no
network there.
I preferred sending a fax for bulk data entry job sent to India/China.
Why don’t I get one of the phones? Joe did.
I am certain I sent the message but they say it never arrived?
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
Reliability
Device robustness, reliability and battery
life in field conditions (sunlight,
temperature, precipitation, humidity, dust).
Viruses
The Network (see other slide)
My pencil and paper system never ran out of battery, credit or lost
my days work.
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
Data ownership and privacy concerns
Data ownership, privacy and
confidentiality issues
Are you spying on me to see where I am going and when
I am working?
Is it acceptable for data to leave the country (route,
host)?
Who can see the data?
Can I retrieve, delete/correct the data in the future?
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
The mobile phone needs to communicate..
What server services are needed?
In the most basic case this could be peerto-peer or SMS Gateway but most likely a
FAO application will need to access and
contribute to data in our core data
repositories/warehouses and operational
systems. This necessitates strong
information management and the use of
open interoperability standards.
web-services, RSS, RDF, Xforms, FeedSync, KML …
Information Technology Division (CIO)
Mobile Phone Applications
CIO Activities
Building expertise - Mobile Device Programming
Training held in August
Optimization of FAO’s web site for viewing on
mobile devices.
Set-up global and local SMS Gateway
Infrastructure (GSM Modem and web-services).
Support for data connectivity to FAO services
(Multimodal transfers and Packetisation ).
Cross platform development: recommendations,
tools and support for both high end smart
phones (appcelerator) and basic phones
Upgrade of email servers to support ActiveSync