Technology Spotlight: Drones, Pigeons, and ICT4D
“Everything is information.” -John Wheeler, American Physicist
Over 2,000 years ago, the pigeon was human civilization’s first endeavor at quickly communicating and sending information at a distance. In the 19th century, German-born Paul Reuter, founder of the present-day Reuters newsgroup, used pigeons to fly stock prices between Belgium and Germany. Today, the internet cheaply and efficiently transmits virtually all information. Yet there are downsides of the familiar but static communication mediums as they require expansive and expensive infrastructure that impoverished countries lack. Just as the pigeons before them, robotic drones are capable of operating anywhere on the planet with essentially no need for infrastructure.
Of equal importance, communication mediums such as the internet cannot (yet) send or distribute physical commodities such as food or medicine--and the inherently valuable information contained within them. The benefits of using drones and the data they acquire, transport, and interpret can offer numerous applications for Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), especially in rural or underdeveloped areas. illuminAid’s focus as an ICT4D organization generally revolves around agriculture, health, and education, and drones are becoming increasingly useful in all of these sectors.
Farmers in India, China, and other developing countries have demonstrated the efficiency of using drones to more safely spray fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Problems with these chemicals aside, up to 1.5 acres (6,000 square meters) can be completed in just 10 minutes, which is 40 to 60 times faster than manual spraying. The spray rate is automatically adjusted according to speed, which avoids pollution and has shown cost savings up to 97% over traditional methods. In the Philippines, drones are being used to detect water stress or lack of specific nutrients in crops. With the rise in unpredictable weather patterns, drones can greatly assist gathering diverse datasets on crop health prior to becoming evident by manual field observation. It’s apparent that the healthier and more nutrient dense are the crops, the more of the same can be said for the people who ingest them. Impediments to implementation abound, including initial cost and training farmers at scale to interpret the data, yet these also may be considered as opportunities for nonprofits and NGOs now and in the future.
In Malawi, one of the world’s first “drone corridors” with a focus on humanitarian and development use was unveiled in 2017. The government of Malawi and UNICEF used drones to identify breeding grounds for mosquitos in an effort to curtail the spread of malaria in the region. They’ve also used drones to transport blood samples from rural areas to centralized laboratories to combat infant HIV and cholera. In Namibia and Ghana, drones have similarly been used to deliver vaccines and medicines. There are limitations to range, and line-of-sight operation requirements are dependent on local jurisdictions, but strides are being made. The drones that were utilized in the Malawian corridor in 2018 had a range of just 25 miles (40 kilometers). Beginning in April 2021, Zipline is implementing delivery service of all leading COVID-19 vaccines at their required temperatures using fully autonomous fixed-wing drones in Rwanda, Ghana, and Nigeria. These drones are capable of dropping 3.9 pounds (1.8 kilograms) of cargo via parachute up to 50 miles away (80 kilometers) before returning to base. In addition to these medical use cases, paradigm-shifting impacts will soon exist for other emergency services including search-and-rescue operations, flood response, and humanitarian aid delivery.
For the past several years, students at Malawi University of Science and Technology have been involved in a drone training program organized by UNICEF and engineers from Virginia Tech. Engineer Edwin Kayuni noted, “It’s only logical that the young Africans will be bringing forward the next aeronautic technology in the world.” As drone corridors increase in number in Africa and around the world, the local populations will be able to take charge of their own future by harnessing a command of this new technology. The importance of STEM education in underdeveloped parts of the world cannot be overstated. It’s an enduring solution for a local population to become the self-sufficient agents of change that may one day replace the need for nonprofits like illuminAid. Michael Scheibenreif, UNICEF’s drone coordinator for Malawi, believes in a guaranteed market for local talent. “The possibilities are endless. The wide adoption of drone technology in Malawi and other African countries will create new, never before seen jobs.” And education involving drones isn’t just for university students. A small-scale study of third graders in Taiwan concluded that drone programming “significantly improved students’ learning of spatial visualization and sequencing skills.”
We’ve come a long way since the days of the pigeon. At the end of the 19th century, human knowledge was doubling every century. With the help of big data and the Internet of Things, IBM estimates the information now available to humans doubles every 12 hours. The trend that is clear is that humans must increasingly rely on AI and information systems to understand what is most important to understand, and drones are a means to that end. Another trend is the decreasing requirement for physical networks from which to acquire and transport tangible and intangible information, drones here too are at the forefront of this revolution.
Though illuminAid has no current plans to incorporate drones into our equipment kits or training sessions, we may sooner than we realize. “Time...” Wheeler reminded, “...is what prevents everything from happening at once.”
REFERENCES
https://www.illuminaid.org/ict4d-applications
http://www.niam.res.in/sites/default/files/pdfs/Use-of-Drone-in-Indian-Agriculture.pdf
https://www.devex.com/news/in-africa-drone-technology-a-gateway-to-stem-95137
https://www.devex.com/news/in-brief-zipline-announces-covid-19-vaccine-drone-delivery-plans-99064
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/01/africa/malawi-unicef-aid/index.html
Chou P-N. Smart Technology for Sustainable Curriculum: Using Drone to Support Young Students’ Learning. Sustainability. 2018; 10(10):3819. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10103819