IEEE Humanitarian Projects: Open Hardware for the Benefit of the Poorest Nations

摘要

An opportunity to solve some of the pressing needs of impoverished nations may be effectively addressed by the active sharing of open hardware solutions. As other articles in this issue of the OSBR demonstrate, open source software is already being used as an effective technology to address humanitarian needs in developing countries. The adoption of open hardware, as an alternative to commercial off-the-shelf products, may be another effective solution to global development challenges. In this article, we will not discuss the socio-economic aspects inherent with global initiatives; but there is a need for meaningful dialogue to come up with appropriate and long-lasting solutions. The focus of this article is on one of the recent activities of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic engineers (IEEE): the Humanitarian Technology Challenge. The Challenge identified three humanitarian problems that could be solved through technology and challenged participants to find an open-source approach to tackle them. The challenges were Reliable Electricity, Data Connectivity, and Personal Identification Records. This article describes the work part of the Reliable Electricity challenge from three perspectives: i) that of the initial HTC Reliable Electricity team; ii) its offspring, called Community Solutions Initiatives (CSI); and iii) an IEEE Canada group called the Humanitarian Initiatives Committee. All of these groups are part of the IEEE.