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


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 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


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



“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

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


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


Add, modify and remove supported languages


Add, modify and remove supported countries and assign languages


Assign regions to the countries


Assign places to countries and regions


Upload audio clips in order to support additional languages


Configure the system and download usage data


Value-flow


QUESTIONS?Thank you for your attention

We will provide a demonstration of the Kasadaka Weather Service later


the kasadaka weather forecast service

Education