Open Source Hardware for Humanitarian Applications

“Advancing Technology for Humanity”

Solar Electric Systems and Humanitarian ProjectsGlenn McKnight and Alfredo Herrera, IEEE Canada HIC

July 2011

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Definitions

Humanitarian Aid and Relief

IEEE Humanitarian Initiatives

Intellectual Property Rights & Licenses

Open Source

Putting it all together

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Definitions

• Humanitarian(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/humanitarian)

– philanthropist or do-gooder; person concerned with people's welfare, and the alleviation of suffering

• Humanitarian Crisis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarian_crises)

– event or series of events threatening the health, safety, security or wellbeing of a community or other large group of people, usually over a wide area

• Intellectual property (IP)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property)

– refers to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized

– Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights

– Common types of IP include: copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets in some jurisdictions

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Human Development IndexThe HDI is used to rank countries by level of "human development" as either developed (high development), developing (middle development), or underdeveloped (low development) countries. It is composed from data on life expectancy, education and per-capita GDP (as indicator of standard of living) collected at the national level.

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World Population > 6 billionThe size of each territory shows the relative proportion of the world's population living there. "Out of every 100 persons added to the population in the coming decade, 97 will live in developing countries." Hania Zlotnik, 2005. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations Secretariat

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Affected by DisastersTerritory size shows the proportion of all people worldwide affected by disasters between 1975 and 2004, that live there. Disasters overwhelm local capacity, causing destruction and suffering, and necessitating a request for outside help. Disasters include droughts, epidemics, volcanoes, storms, fires, and events caused by accidents or indirectly caused by wars.

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Refugee DestinationTerritory size shows the global proportion of both refugees and internally displaced persons living there. The internal movement of people explains why territories experiencing recent instability can simultaneously be a major destination of displaced people, for example Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2003 there were an estimated 15 million refugees and internally displaced persons.

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International Food AidWars, droughts, economic collapse and other disasters disrupt access to basic necessities. This map shows sources of international financial donations intended to provide food for people whose normal way of getting food has failed. In 2005 governments contributed about US$ 2.5 billion to food aid programmes.

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Definitions

Humanitarian Aid and Relief

IEEE Humanitarian Initiatives

Intellectual Property Rights & Licenses

Open Source

Putting it all together

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Aid and relief supply chains

• International Development, $100 billion/year in 2009. • International charity is being redefined by private donors like

the Gates Foundation, for example, outstripping the annual budget of long‐time donors like the UK, Canada or the World Health Organization.

• Public-private (and civil-military) partnerships are found in the relief supply chain

• In 2009, more than 3,600 U.S. NGOs conducted international development and relief activities overseas […] bringing not only technical expertise, but also additional, private resources for international development and relief work.

• Fertile environment for innovation and use of technology

(*) http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a713701063

(**) http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/default.aspx?indid=1614

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Some examples of aid or relief agencies

• OCHA (http://www.unocha.org)– UNs Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs responsible for

bringing together coherent response to emergencies.• World Food Programme (http://www.wfp.org/)

– WFP is part of the United Nations system and is voluntarily funded. Five objectives:

• Save lives and protect livelihoods in emergencies • Prepare for emergencies • Restore and rebuild lives after emergencies • Reduce chronic hunger and undernutrition everywhere • Strengthen the capacity of countries to reduce hunger

• UN Peace keeping (http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/)• Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART)• Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)• Doctors Without Borders • United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

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A framework for humanitarian logistics(Gyöngyi Kovács, Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Research (HUMLOG) Institute. Hanken School of Economics (Hanken) and National Defence University of Finland (NDU).

Preparation Immediate response

Reconstruction

Regional perspective

Extra-regionalperspective

Disaster preventionRisk management

Crisis management Continuity planning

Strategic planning Short-termproject management

Long-term project management

Demand management

Supply management

Fulfillment

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Disaster relief operations takes 80% of humanitarian logistical costs

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UNICEF Innovations DevelopmentCombining low-tech hardware with sophisticated open-source software to explore novel ways to both empower young people and improve UNICEF's operations. Also finds ways to integrate appropriate technological systems into existing UNICEF working practices to augment and improve the effectiveness of our operations

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Inveneo Inveneo is a nonprofit social enterprise, which means that we operate like a business with a social mission. Its social mission is to get the tools of ICT, such as computers, telephony, and Internet access to those who need it most — people and organizations in rural and highly underserved communities of the developing world.

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Definitions

Humanitarian Aid and Relief

IEEE Humanitarian Initiatives

Intellectual Property Rights & Licenses

Open Source

Putting it all together

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Three-year project, launched in 2008: phase 4&5 droppedPartnership between United Nations Foundation and IEEE: bring a more systematic approach to applying technology to solve world problems

Focused on three challenges:

• Reliable Electricity

• Data Connectivity of Rural District Health Offices

• Individual ID Tied to Health Records (abandoned)

Humanitarian Technology Challenge (HTC)

ProjectFrameworkDefinition

ChallengeFormulation

SolutionFormulation

ProductDevelop.

Deploy. & Eval.

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5

2012201120102008 2009

Prototypes

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www.CommunitySolutionsInitiative.org

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www.CommunitySolutionsInitiative.org

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Canadian Humanitarian Initiatives Committee

Initially established to:• support participation in the Humanitarian Technology Challenge• explore interest in a sustained humanitarian initiatives committee.

Now: • standing committee supporting IEEE members in Canada that are

participating in Humanitarian initiatives or building relationships that will enable our members to fulfil IEEE’s strategic vision.

Need of a systematic approach to

solve humanitarian

problems

Desire to demonstrate expertise & relevance of IEEE to positively impact humanity

Using HIC framework to assist sections on humanitarian initiatives

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Definitions

Humanitarian Aid and Relief

IEEE Humanitarian Initiatives

Intellectual Property Rights & Licenses

Open Source

Putting it all together

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Intellectual Property Rights Principles(source: wikipedia)

• Intellectual property law grants to owners exclusive rights, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work.

• Common types of IP include: copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets in some jurisdictions.

• Initially copyright law only applied to the copying of books, now it applies to original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture.

• Copyright does not protect ideas, only their expression or fixation.

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Public Domain (new slide)(source: wikipedia)

• Works are in the public domain if:– they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all, – if the intellectual property rights have expired,– and/or if the intellectual property rights are forfeited.

• Public Domain examples: the English language, the formulae of Newtonian physics, the works of Shakespeare and Beethoven, and the patents on powered flight.

• In copyright law, a rule of thumb in most countries would be that would be that the last possible date for copyright protection would be 50 to 70 years after the death of the author.

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Copyright Licensing(source: wikipedia)

• Copyright owners have exclusive right to control copying and other exploitation of their works for a specific period of time.

• Copyrighted work may not be exploited without an expressed consent of its owner, unless within limitations and exceptions to copyright.

• Owners can license or transfer their exclusive rights. License provisions restricting the rights to transfer the license.

• The License often includes elements other than copyright, such as patents, trademarks, implied warranty, and liability.

• Before choosing license, read license text carefully.

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Copy-left(source: wikipedia)

• Copy-left is based on copyright law, and licenses the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work but requires that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work.

• a.k.a a viral license because license terms spread from work to work. Copy-left prevents the releasing a modified version of the copy-left software under a different license.

• The GNU General Public License, originally written by Richard Stallman, was the first copy-left license.

• Creative Commons, a non-profit organization founded by Lawrence Lessig, has a copyleft provision in its license called ShareAlike.

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Common Open Source Licenses(http://opensource.org/licenses/)

GNU GeneralPublic License

TAPR

Creative Commons

BSD License

Apache License v. 2.0

MIT License

Copyleft Non copyleft

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Definitions

Humanitarian Aid and Relief

IEEE Humanitarian Initiatives

Intellectual Property Rights & Licenses

Open Source

Putting it all together

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Free Software(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

• Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms:

– The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

– The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

– The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour (freedom 2).

– The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

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Open Source Software(http://opensource.org/)

• The Open Source Initiative (OSI) shares its origin with the entire history of Unix, Internet free software, and the hacker culture. It began with the publication of Eric Raymond's paper The Cathedral and the Bazaar in 1997, and prompted Netscape to make the source code of its browser readily available in 1998.

• OSI was formed as an educational, advocacy, and stewardship organization at a cusp moment in the history of that culture.

• Formalized the term “Open Source”.

• Oversees aproval process of Open Source licenses

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Open Source Licenses studied

• IEEE Intellectual Property Rights– http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/

• Open Source Hardware:– http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW/

• The TAPR Open Hardware License– http://www.tapr.org/ohl.html

• (cc) Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike– http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

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MIT License (new slide)

• License used

• Copyright owner

• Licensee(s)

• Rights licensed

• Warranties, • Liability

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(CC) BY-NC-SA (new slide)

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“WECARE Solar License” (new slide) (1/2)

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“WECARE Solar License” (new slide) (2/2)

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Definitions

Humanitarian Aid and Relief

IEEE Humanitarian Initiatives

Intellectual Property Rights & Licenses

Open Source

Putting it all together

35

Open Source HW Humanitarian projectsHIC leading definition and adoption of Open Hardware best-practices for humanitarian IEEE projects, some of these projects include:

• 250W power generation and load management system: HTC-RE• 1KW Mobile charging station: PES-CSI (Sirona-Haiti)• Solar Suitcase: WE CARE & HIC collaboration • Wind Turbine: PES-CSI, EWB-USA, U of Washington & Seattle U• Pedal power: PES-CSI and IncSys

Benefits:• Define open source projects for IEEE humanitarian initiatives• Draft a license that protects Intellectual Property and design details,

while allowing IEEE volunteers to contribute fully• Define process of how-to launch open hardware designs • Continue evolving these platforms, engaging IEEE members• Add contributions from professionals using license to delimit their

volunteer work from their job's design work• Explore ways to accept Intellectual Property donations from

corporations

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Student Design Competition (’10-’11)http://ewh.ieee.org/mu/r7-hic/initiatives/student-design-competition-2010-2011/

• Top teams at the CCECE 2011, • First prize• Sustainable Solar team, Villanova University

• Second PriceBoondocks team, University of Waterloo

• Third Price Waterloo Light Followers team, University of Waterloo

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Student Design Competition (’10-’11)http://ewh.ieee.org/mu/r7-hic/initiatives/student-design-competition-2010-2011/