the kasadaka weather forecast service

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE Kim Bosman & Jari

Ferguson

INTRODUCTION Who are we?

• Jari Ferguson - graduated Information Sciences student• Kim Bosman - 2nd year Artificial Intelligence student

The ICT4D course at the VU:• Master course Artificial Intelligence/Computer Science• Combining theory with practical• Use cases for Mali

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

USE CASEMali:• Land area: 1.2 million km2 (36 times larger than The Netherlands)• 14.5 million inhabitants• 66% of gross domestic product from agriculture• Around 40 different languages, French is the main language• High percentage of illiteracy (66%)• Limited to no Internet access• Limited access to power-grid• Lack of reliable and accessible weather forecasts, even though

the global climate changes are noticeable• Telecommunications: 112,000 fixed lines vs 14,6 million mobile

phones

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

USE CASERequirements:• Autonomous system• Allow farmers to get actual, region and

town specific weather forecasts• Support multiple-day forecasts• Provide spoken forecasts in plain

language• Support multiple languages• Keypad operated menus• Low power consumption

(solar power and batteries)

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

KASADAKA PLATFORM• Small, cheap and low-powered hardware• Web-like information sharing made possible for

the rural poor• Multiple ways of accessing information

- Through voice-, SMS-based, visual or textual

interfaces- Through the Web, using mesh networks or

overthe GSM network

• Allows easy development of information services relevant to local communities in their preferred language

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

PROTOTYPE #1• Call-in system• Support for French and English• Up to five days of weather forecasts• Four forecasts per day (night, morning, afternoon and

evening)• Forecasts included: rainfall, temperature, wind direction

and wind speed• Meteorological data obtained from OpenWeatherMap

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

“In the night it will be warm with light rain with a

gentle breeze from the southwest.”

“In the afternoon it will be hot with no rain with a gentle breeze from the

west.”

Numerical data to verbal expressionsNumerical data from OpenWeatherMap.org is translated into verbal expressions, for instance:

• Wind direction in degrees to “north, northeast, east etc.”• Wind speed in m/s to Beaufort ”gentle breeze, strong

breeze, gale etc.”• Temperature in degrees Fahrenheit to “cold, warm, hot,

very hot etc.”• Rainfall in mm to “dry, moderate, heavy etc.”

Text-to-speech is not suitable: expensive and does not cover the many (40) languages in Mali or other potential countries:

• Solution: create audio clips and compose sentences at runtime

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

FEEDBACK FROM MALI• Reduce number of forecasts to two per day:

DaytimeNight time

• Support for more languages• Translation of numerical temperature to verbal

expressions not consistent with local standards

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

PROTOTYPE #2• Web based User Interface for administration and

configuration• Ability to add more languages• Ability to add / modify countries, regions and places• Two forecasts per day (night, day), instead of four• Export usage data for analysis

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

Add, modify and remove supported languages

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

Add, modify and remove supported countries and assign languages

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

Assign regions to the countries

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

Assign places to countries and regions

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

Upload audio clips in order to support additional languages

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

Configure the system and download usage data

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

Value-flow

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON

QUESTIONS?Thank you for your attention

We will provide a demonstration of the Kasadaka Weather Service later

KASADAKA WEATHER SERVICE – BOSMAN & FERGUSON