the Program Booklet - IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology ...

Panel: Water and Agriculture
Monday, October 22, 2012 (10:30am – 12:30pm)
East Room, 3 rd Floor
Presentation Abstracts:
Reflecting on the evolution of my perspective of water quality and public
health problems in the developing world
- Christine Lee
The need for an integrated approach to addressing access to clean water is
undeniable. Christine will reflect on both the technological and societal
challenges related to water and health sanitation issues and how her view of
these challenges was drastically shifted by her experiences abroad, specifically
in Bangladesh and Tanzania. The pilot projects she was a part of provided a
window into the complexity of global water access issues, strongly influence
Christine’s current interest in the intersection of science and policy as a AAAS
fellow, and underline the need for greater synergies between science and
technology research and international development strategies.
Remote sensing technologies for water and agriculture in emerging
economies
– Terry Newby
Remote Sensing data can play a significant role in providing decision support
information to rural communities and small-scale rural farmers in developing
countries. However a number of challenges need to be overcome. These include
access to image data, processing capability, human capacity and skill,
appreciation of the data by decision makers and operational applications. These
challenges will be highlighted through examples from southern Africa and the
possible societal benefit of the use of remote sensing will be discussed.
Smart Rain Water Harvesting and Multiple Uses For Human Welfare,
Environmental Sustainability and Adoption to Climate Change - Impacts
in Semi-Arid Regions
- Chilka Sharma
Water is most essential to sustain life and overall development in semi-arid areas
as the livelihoods of people are fully dependent on the limited quantity of rains,
mostly occurring during monsoon season. Hence, conservation and management
of available water resource is fundamental to sustain livelihoods. Village
ecosystems are complex in nature having inter-linkages between available
natural resources, particularly water and the livelihoods of village communities
in semi-arid regions.
This paper is based on the study on the cluster of villages in semi-arid area of
Indian desert on socio economic profile of the villages; natural resources, status
and prospect for development through smart rain water harvesting (SRWH), a
2012 GHTC Page 38