Mobile phone and web app technology is being extensively used in Africa and elsewhere to provide information, services, and education to people in institutions and rural communities. At its best, digital technologies have advantages over traditional approaches – they can provide cheap, up-to-date information, which is tailored to the needs of the individual receiving it, and relevant to their particular location.
This aspect of DOWN2EARTH, led by the Digital User Engagement Team (DUET), will develop/enhance several desktop and mobile phone technologies for use by agro-pastoralists to access tailored information generated from our hydrological model, CUWALID. These provide information from seasonal forecasts (for the upcoming rainy season) on soil moisture storage, groundwater storage, and crop yields for a set of different crop types for a given user’s location, as percentage differences (plus or minus) compared to a defined baseline condition. The technologies will also report uncertainty estimates for these forecasts. The services will be designed in such a way that it provides this information that is tailored to the specific context of agro-pastoralists in HAD, based on researched use cases. They will also present information in a way which is sensitive to their culture and existing practices, so it can be easily interpreted and acted upon.
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An EU Horizon 2020 Project funded under grant agreement No 869550