the kasadaka weather forecast service
TRANSCRIPT
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