Akvo Phone
From Akvo Labs
Akvo Phone is the code name of the Akvo mobile phone one-click reporting application, which is currently under development.
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Background
Akvo Really Simple Reporting (Akvo RSR) is a way for field project workers to report on the progress of a project quickly and easily. Akvo RSR uses web tools as well as standard SMS messages (Akvo SMS) from mobile phones to allow people to do updates for a project. The project updates are displayed on a web page associated with the project on the Akvo.org web site, or a web page with the partner’s URL and branding.
This serves several purposes:
- It makes it easy for everybody to do quick updates to a project, very muck like a Twitter message or a Facebook status update. Akvo RSR updates acts as a microblog for the project.
- It increases transparency. The projects have until now not been visible to the general public nor the sponsors of the project, as reporting has been done normally every six months in hard to interpret project document formats.
- It highlights progress. Projects can be followed on a near-time basis and you can see pictures and information from projects as and when things are posted.
Using photographs and short messages to decrease the time it takes to make a short update for a project we increase the immediacy and the near-time feeling of “being there”. Over time we are convinced that this will decrease the need for traditional reporting.
Components of Akvo Phone application
The Akvo Phone application (on paper) consist of a number of different components:
- Akvo Phone application on a mobile phone (Android, iPhone)
- Cloud based service, with web pages for displaying pictures and an API
- Integration with the Akvo RSR API
Akvo Phone application on a mobile phone (Android, iPhone)
There are a number of things which are difficult to do well with a just a standard mobile phone and an SMS message. If we could solve these issues we would improve the Akvo RSR system significantly.
- How do you know if a photograph actually shows a new pump installation, which it is claimed to show, has the photograph been tampered with?
- What if the photograph was taken several weeks ago, how would you know?
- Who took the photograph and sent the message, how can you tell?
- Where was the photograph taken, how can you know?
At Akvo we have been thinking about these issues for some time and we are working on in the Akvo Labs together with Blindsight Corporation, Berkeley CA.
We think of the answer to these problems, listed above, are what we call the Akvo Phone application. The Akvo Phone application is a location aware phone (GPS), which also "fingerprints" the photographs, user id, phone number and time stamp (ensures these values are not tampered with). Take a few photographs with this phone from two different angles and it is probably cheaper and easier to build the pump installation than to fake the information that the phone sends to the Akvo Phone servers.
Put this camera phone in the hands of a trusted reporter / inspector / partner and you have a high level of confidence that what you see is (also) what you have in the field. One can conceivably add a bit of process here, where the first picture in a series is always of the person who we have sent out, so we know that the trusted person was actually Oel Wingo there.
Our water technical specialist at Akvo.org, Mark Tiele Westra, also tell us that from one of these photographs it is likely that a specialist can tell a lot about the way a pump has been built and installed. And the specialist doesn't have to go on site. It is not about replacing local knowledge and trusted field partners, but it adds a level of certainty through technology, which is hard to do with other means without great expense.
So with an Akvo Phone application you can determine a number of things:
- Where a photograph was taken
- What time a photograph was taken (you get the time from the GPS satellites)
- The photograph really shows what was in front of the camera at the time the picture was taken, especially if you take several photographs at different angles (the photograph has not been manipulated)
- Which camera phone and person took the photograph (user id combined with IMEI gives a reasonable level of security)
Software platform for Akvo phone applications
There are a couple of platforms out there on which one can run something like Akvo Phone applications on. Nokia Symbian, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Apple iPhone, Google Android and others. They all have advantages and disadvantages.
We currently have a technology demonstrator available, written by engineers at Blindsight Corporation, under an open license, which we can reuse, on the Android platform. This is a good start for us to get the Akvo Phone application of the ground as quickly as possible. The application is written in Java.
Given that all software that Akvo Foundation produces, and uses, needs to be, as far as possible, available as open source software or the content available under an open license. What platform should we develop Akvo Phone on? The answer needs to take a number of things into consideration:
- Widespread adoption
- Ease of distribution of application and updates
- Avoidance of malware, viruses and trojans on the phone
- Licensing issues
- Ensuring the integrity of the Akvo Phone application
- And more (you fill in the rest)
At the moment we are focusing on Android, as it overall is probably has the best combination of features and adaptation for us.
Akvo Phone Idealized Use Case / Security Analysis
The Akvo Phone Security Analysis provides a breakdown of what we hope that the Akvo Phone can do to make the process of properly documenting project easier. The four major conclusions of the analysis are:
- The phone is best understood as a way of letting trusted people prove what they have seen
- You can't use technical measures to get people to take pictures of what they don't want to show you
- Strong tamper resistance in software is probably achievable without outlandish measures
- Hardware and phone operating systems are the risk factors
Other mobile phone uses for Akvo tools
Akvo RSR SMS
A mobile reporter / monitor / project participant who want to send reports or updates to the Akvo RSR system may not have internet access. So we are working to make it possible to use SMS to send messages and photos directly to the project webpage. Say you are giving a training in the field on how to drill a well. The update could then be a photo of the drilling crew and the drilling location, with a short description of what is taking place. When the SMS is sent, within a few minutes the update will be posted on the project webpage.
In Akvo RSR as of this writing we have an alpha version of the SMS gateway built. The gateway uses a Swedish phone number at the moment for receiving the messages. In the Akvo RSR administration interface you can easily link a particular sending phone number to a particular project.
We are looking at extending this so that we can have several phone numbers receiving SMSs for Akvo RSR updates. This means that you can create a matrix of sending phone number : receiving phone number : project and this allows you to have a sending phone associated with multiple projects, and the only resource you need is as many phone numbers as the largest number of projects a specific phone is associated with. And extra phone numbers on the receiving end is relatively cheap.
This makes it easy to associate a particular phone with a particular project and you significantly lower the user error when picking a project to send an update to, as in the process of setting up the phone numbers on the users phone you can associate real project names in the address book with the phone number to send the update too.
Akvo RSR translations via txteagle
Several discussions with Ben White and this video with Nathan Eagle, made it clear that we could get crowd-sourcing done for translations of Akvo RSR updates in areas where txteagle has been implemented.
Akvopedia on a phone
Akvo is more than just field reporting. The Akvopedia is a knowledge repository for sustainable, low-cost, locally maintainable, water and sanitation solutions. The Akvopedia is based on the same software as the Wikipedia and is open to all to participate to create knowledge.
The problem with the Akvopedia is the same as the Wikipedia. How do you get the knowledge out there where it is needed? Often internet connectivity is very poor in the field offices of our field partners. Just downloading an article from the Akvopedia can take 10 minutes. Not to talk about the areas with no internet connectivity.
If a mobile phone is your only access-point into the infosphere (the combined internet and mobile phone network) how can you get access to information in the Akvopedia? Or other project related information, such as maps. There are a number of areas which we would like to investigate:
- How do we make it possible to organized links to cell-phone readable water technology resources (like the Akvopedia) to help people understand what is possible?
- How can we make checklist and FAQ-format implementation tips available via the mobile phone for specific water technologies to help people get their systems running in the field?
- How we display interactive maps, which show known deployments of specific water technologies so people can find and visit a working system of a given type in their area?
