Designing an architecture for delivering mobile information services to the rural developing world
Proceedings of the 15th international conference on World Wide Web
ODK tables: data organization and information services on a smartphone
NSDR '11 Proceedings of the 5th ACM workshop on Networked systems for developing regions
Open data kit sensors: a sensor integration framework for android at the application-level
Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services
Introducing Sapelli: a mobile data collection platform for non-literate users
Proceedings of the 4th Annual Symposium on Computing for Development
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This paper describes a project initiated by non-literate indigenous people to equip their own "citizen scientists" with rugged smartphones running adapted software that enable them to share some of their detailed environmental knowledge in ways that improve the sustainable management of their forest. Supporting local people to share their environmental knowledge in scientifically valid and strategically targeted ways can lead to improvement in environmental governance, environmental justice and management practices. Mbendjele hunter-gatherers in the rainforests of Congo are working together with the ExCiteS Research Group at University College London to make their local knowledge about commercial hunters' activities improve the control of commercial hunters and diminish the harassment they often experience at the hands of "eco-guards" who enforce hunting regulations. Developing and deploying a system for non-literate users introduces a range of challenges that we have tried to solve. Our Anti-Poaching data collection platform, running on Android smartphones, is based on a decision tree of pictorial icons and employs various smartphone sensors to augment observations. We describe its development here.