Tech For Good - Issue 07

TACKLING THE STEM GENDER GAP CAN 3D PRINTING SAVE THE HOUSING CRISIS? RESCUING THE PLANET’S WETLANDS CHANGING CHARITY FOR THE BETTER

EDUCATING

EARTH The World Health Organization and Out There Impact have launched a mobile education campaign to counter the spread of COVID-19 disinformation. We hear about their plans to reach 1.5 billion people

DANIEL BRIGHAM Content Director

W

hile COVID-19 continues to cast a terrible shadow across much of the planet, there is hope that a return to normality may finally be on the horizon. That hope has arrived in the form of vaccines, truly extraordinary feats of science that give us reason to be proud of what humans can be capable of when acting in the name of good.

As so often, though, with good comes bad. The roll out of vaccines has arrived with a headwind of misinformation and its more malicious cousin, disinformation. While scepticism can be healthy, the pandemic has seen the unhealthy side of scepticism: outright lies that put lives at risk, and that’s continued with the vaccination process.

Vaccine misinformation isn’t at all new. Its dangers once again received public attention in 2019 when the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that measles was on the rise again due to not enough people not taking up the vaccine. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, reacted to that news in August of that year: “I am

afraid people have just been listening to that superstitious mumbo-jumbo on the Internet, all that antivax stuff, and thinking that the MMR vaccine is a bad idea. That’s wrong. Please get your kids vaccinated.”

It may have been full of Johnson’s usual blustering style, but the crux is true – that the internet has spread misinformation about vaccines – and even truer now.

WHO has acted by launching a mobile campaign to counter the dangerous spread of disinformation around the COVID-19 vaccines, with the target of reaching 1.5 billion people.

The brains and engine behind the campaign is Out There Impact, the social good arm of Out There Media, a leading mobile advertising and data monetisation firm. We speak to them about their ambitious – and vital – plans to educate the world about how vaccines can lift us all out of the pandemic, and bring us all hope once again.

I hope you enjoy the issue!

PUBLISHED BY BULLETIN MEDIA LTD, Norwich, UK Company No: 11454926 TALK TO US editorial@digitalbulletin.com business@digitalbulletin.com

CONTENTS 06

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The fight against COVID-19 vaccine disinformation

Why charities are playing tech catch-up

HEALTHCARE

LEADERSHIP

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The 3D solution to the housing crisis

A chat with 15-year-old Freddie Howells

SOCIAL GOOD

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GLOBAL NEWS

From asteroid samples to scooters, we round up the news

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EDUCATION

Closing the gender gap in STEM

TEEN TECH STORIES

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EXPERT INSIGHT

LearnLife’s Christopher Pommerening

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ENVIRONMENT

How augmented reality could save Earth’s wetlands

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EDUCATION

We meet STEM scholar Anoushka Patel

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HEALTHCARE

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HALTING THE SPREAD

HALTING THE SPREAD

The fight against COVID-19 has been obstructed by misinformation.

We speak to Out There Impact about its partnership with the World Health Organization as they look to counter the spread of disinformation by reaching 1.5 billion people through an ambitious global mobile education campaign AUTHOR: Daniel Brigham

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I

t was April 23, 2020 when misinformation around the coronavirus pandemic suddenly escalated. And it came from the mouth of the President of the United States of America.

“And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute,” Donald Trump said during a White House taskforce briefing. “One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? So it’d be interesting to check that.” Then, pointing to his head, Trump said: “I’m not a doctor. But I’m, like, a person that has a good you-know-what.”

Needless to day, disinfectants do not work inside the body. Very bad things would happen. But here was the 8

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President suggesting that consuming disinfectant could kill COVID-19. Misinformation and the more malicious disinformation was, in some way, legitimised that day. Now, globally, we are lost in a landslide of it. Incorrect information on the wearing of masks, on the efficacy and importance of vaccinations, even on the actual existence of the virus, is everywhere. And that’s not to mention the more out-there conspiracy theories around 5G masts (they spread coronavirus) and Bill Gates (he plans to microchip everyone in order to fight COVID-19).

While it is often tempting to shrug off this kind of lunacy, misinformation of this kind is deadly. Once it’s on social media, there is no dragging it back.

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Research in September by Statista found that 64% of respondents to a survey in the United Kingdom who had encountered false or misinformation said they were encountering it daily.

In the same month, the World Health Organization (WHO) acted to counter the spread of misinformation and disinformation, or what it calls the “infodemic”: “We call on Member States to develop and implement action plans to manage the infodemic by promoting the timely dissemination of accurate information, based on science and evidence, to all communities, and in particular high-risk groups; and preventing the spread, and combating, mis- and disinformation while respecting freedom of expression.”

In December, WHO went another step further by taking matters into its own hands. It announced a global mobile education campaign to stem the ongoing spread of COVID-19 by hitting back against the infodemic through mobile phone messages. The campaign will reach 300 million people in the first few months of 2021, and its ultimate aim is to reach 1.5 billion people this year.

WHO’s partner on this ambitious project is Out There Impact, the social good division of Out There Media, considered the world leaders in the telcodriven mobile advertising space. Out There Media partners with the world’s

We have the network, we have grown globally.

Let’s use this for good, let’s use our technology to make the world a better place” Kerstin Trikalitis

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leading mobile network operators, who use its proprietary multi-channel digital advertising platform, called Mobucks.

The platform links mobile operators to the advertising world, allowing companies to advertise through apps, videos, or simple messages. It also delivers analytics and reporting, as well as campaign creation and management. Now, though, it is also being used to send UN-backed information on COVID-19 to millions of people across the globe.

The brains behind the campaign are Daphne Loukas, CEO and Co-Founder of Out There Impact, and Kerstin Trik10

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alitis, CEO and Co-Founder of Out There Media. They met while both were studying in Vienna, where they discussed plans to start a business together. But it wasn’t until several years later in 2008, when Loukas received a call from Trikalitis, that Out There Media was born.

“One day I was sitting in my office, and my phone rings, and it was Kerstin,” says Loukas. “And she said: ‘I know what we’re going to do. We’re going to do mobile advertising.’ And I was like ‘mobile what?!’ It was pre-iPhone, pre-apps.’”

The business grew out of Austria, before expanding across Europe,

HALTING THE SPREAD

Asia, the Middle-East and Africa. Latin America is next. As global domination continued on the back of the Mobucks platform, in 2018 Trikalitis and Loukas wanted to use it for something new.

“We thought: we have the network, we have grown globally,” says Trikalitis. “Let’s use this for good, let’s use our technology to make the world a better place.”

“We wanted to leverage what we have,” says Loukas. “We have the engine sitting there, ready, we can use the engine to send any message we want for the greater good. In this case, for the World Health Organization, but we’ve also done

a campaign for the United Nations, and a campaign in South Africa called ‘Three Little Minutes’ that is for the education of young children. We had the chance to make a difference, to not just help sell some shampoos or Coca-Cola.”

The germ of Out There Impact came from a conversation with representatives of the UN at a conference, who saw the immense possibilities of partnering with a company that has access to over a billion people. The UN had already been trying to work with mobile operators as part of its goal to spread its messaging around its Sustainable Development ISSUE 07

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We saw fake news all of the way from communities up to regional levels and global levels.

So we felt that because we could do something, we had to do it” Daphne Loukas

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Goals (SDGs). But the UN was getting nowhere with the mobile operators, and that’s where Out There Media’s reach suddenly became very attractive.

The UN’s campaign used Mobucks to send out messages asking people to enter a number between one and 17. The number they picked would then correspond to one of the UN’s 17 SDGs, including gender equality, climate action, clean water and sanitation, sustainable cities and communities, and life below water. Run across Asia, the Middle East and Africa, its success led to the partnership with WHO at the start of the pandemic.

“After the success of that campaign, we saw there was the increase in fake news around the pandemic, with even Trump telling people to use disinfectant,” says Trikalitis. “So it wasn’t just misinformation in the developing market, but also very much in the developed world. There was a complete lack of communication on a local, national, and global level.

Governments were doing their own things, with no collaboration.”

“You had problems on a community level too, with stuff like people saying if you had incense at home that would stop you getting COVID,” says Loukas. “So we saw fake news all of the way from communities up to regional levels and

HALTING THE SPREAD

global levels. So we felt that because we could do something, we had to do it.”

And this is when they reached out to WHO. They were introduced by the UN, with a plan of action for WHO that centred around a campaign to target everyone with a mobile phone, no matter how new or old the tech. “Life-saving information has to reach everyone without exception,” says Trikalitis.

However, none of this would have been possible if Out There Impact hadn’t been able to successfully complete the arduous task of persuading the mobile operators to get on board pro bono. “I remember at the beginning we knew it would be a tough ask, so we focussed most of our team onto making this

a reality,” says Trikalitis. “We had the engine, and we had to make it happen.

“Some of the operators initially said they couldn’t do it pro bono, so we picked the ones who wholeheartedly got on board from the start in various countries across the world. But we thought this was all going to happen in May, with the first wave of the pandemic.

But it took us until December – with the second wave – to persuade most of the operators to get on board pro bono. It took much longer than we had expected, and that should be said openly.

“But it also shows you should never give up – we just relentlessly continued asking our partners to get on board for free. And by the second wave suddenly many of them started to rally around the

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campaign and were really keen to get on board pro bono! So we must thank our partners for that.

“We can reach 300 million people currently, and when the final operators get on board we’ll be able to reach over 1.5 billion people. That’s our ambition.

We’re very confident.”

As well as being powered by Mobucks, the campaign is also leveraging Rich Communication Services (RCS), a brandnew mobile messaging standard, owned by the operators. Available on Android phones, it is predicted to replace SMS and to rival Apple’s iMessage.

“Every new Android handset that’s being produced now automatically has RCS, to give a WhatsApp-like experience on message,” says Trikalitis.

“In Europe, your good-old SMS trays are being converted to RCS trays, so you are able to get rich content and rich experiences. Not all of the telcos have it yet, but many do in the developed world. We’re using RCS in this campaign where possible to provide better quality messaging.”

While Out There Impact’s partnership with WHO is an enormous undertaking, Loukas hopes it will also mean it opens further doors.

“I think that maybe not so many people know about us, and the work we’re doing yet,” she says. “I think awareness will 14

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HALTING THE SPREAD

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grow, though. But we’re not just looking to do global projects, we’re looking to be more local as well. For example the ‘Three Little Minutes’ campaign in South Africa, which I mentioned earlier, is on a much smaller scale.

“The aim was to educate parents that there’s a correlation between how much time you spend with your kid when they’re very young, with drop-out rates at schools later in childhood. So it’s really, really important to spend at least three minutes a day with your child, 16

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sharing songs or stories. So we looked for a way to get mothers and fathers engaged with their children, so we did things like sending them snippets of bedroom stories to read out. So we ran this campaign, sending messages to a few million parents in South Africa, and now we see that many similar organisations to the one that approached us in South Africa want to tap into what we can do.

“Obviously there’s huge potential through the UN as well, and we’re

HALTING THE SPREAD

We can reach 300 million people currently, and when the final operators get on board we’ll be able to reach over 1.5 billion people.

That’s our ambition. We’re very confident”

looking at the work we can do with refugees. But it’s also smaller organisations on a local level where we think a real difference can be made.”

There are also internal changes. Until now, the Out There Media team has been working on Out There Impact, but Loukas and Trikalitis want to create a separate team that focuses solely on social good campaigns. While Media is still the driving force of the company, there’s no doubt that Impact has energised the pair.

They’ve seen the good that big tech

companies can do, and they want to see more following a similar path. “It is their responsibility,” says Trikalitis. “And their obligation. It has to be like that.”

“Everything is about technology now,” says Loukas. “And we’ve seen that since the start of the pandemic, suddenly everything and everybody was forced to move into the digital sphere. And that was such a catalyst and we saw such an exponentially fast transition to digital technology, so I think tech companies must also contribute to the greater good.”

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PRINTING SUSTAINABLE HOMES

PRINTING SUSTAINABLE HOMES The solution to the housing crisis might be very simple: let’s 3D-print more. We speak to Sam Ruben, Co-Founder and Chief Sustainability Officer of Mighty Buildings, about how 3D printing houses can be the safest, cheaper and most sustainable option for the construction industry

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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‘

I

f people don’t have money, why don’t we just print more?’ Understanding why this is not a viable solution is often children’s first economy lesson. Although we can’t end poverty by printing money, perhaps we can solve the housing crisis by printing homes.

Countries across the world are asking their citizens to stay at home, a request hindered by the housing crisis. In the last ten years, house prices have increased by over 50% in the United States, forcing half of U.S. renters to spend 30% or more of their income on housing. This situation is worse in popular states like California, which has 2.5 million fewer homes than the per capita average of the rest of the country. At the current building pace, in ten years California will still fall a million units behind the number of homes its population requires.

Traditional construction methods are not only unable to meet this demand, they are also labour-intensive, energy inefficient and highly polluting. The construction industry is responsible for almost 40% of the total U.S. carbon emissions, and 11% of global emissions, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.

Is it worth sacrificing the environment to provide people with homes?

Perhaps that choice can be avoided.

Sam Ruben, Co-Founder and Chief Sustainability Officer at Mighty Buildings, 20

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believes that there’s an option that can solve the housing crisis without damaging the environment in the process: 3D printing homes.

“3D printing is a zero-waste production process,” he says. “It eliminates the three to five pounds per square foot that normally goes to landfill in traditional construction.”

Mighty Buildings is a California-based company that uses 3D printing and robotic automation to build, according to Ruben, “beautiful, affordable and sustainable housing” and address the housing crisis. The Y Combinator-backed startup uses a 20-foot-tall 3D printer that can print a 350-square-foot studio in less

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3D printing is a zero-waste production process.

It eliminates the three to five pounds per square foot that normally goes to landfill in traditional construction” than 24 hours, and sells it for as little as $115,000. Although the company has completed only nine units to date, it has 25 more in contracts and is planning to print 1,000 over the course of 2021.

“Our pricing is 40% less than comparable quality site-built construction, and that’s a big part of our focus on social sustainability,” Ruben says. “We want to provide a high-quality product at an affordable price.”

However, the company’s key innovation is not the idea of 3D printing houses, which has been tried in the past, but the material from which these homes are made. Instead of 3D printed concrete, Mighty Buildings uses Light Stone

Sam Ruben

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Material (LSM), a thermoset composite made from a combination of polymers that hardens itself when exposed to UV light. This quality allows the material to be easily malleable, affordable and, fundamentally, sustainable.

“It means we can print the roof as well as the walls and the floors all in a single print cycle,” Ruben says. “We don’t have to stop, add rebar, pour aggregate and then print the next layer as you do with 3D printed concrete.”

Printing an entire house requires a massive printer. Mighty Building’s lightbased printer, the largest light-based printer in the world according to Unreg22

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ular Laboratories, can print up to a 3,700 cubic foot volume. “We’re actually more constrained by the limitations on how large an object you can transport over roads than we are by the printer itself,” Ruben says.

The ability to avoid on-site assembly by printing buildings has an added benefit: it automates the construction process by 80%. Therefore, Mighty Buildings also overcomes another one of the challenges of the construction industry: the lack of skilled labour. According to the University of Denver Burns School of Construction Management, there are currently 400,000 construction jobs in

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the United States that are empty.

“In 2008, a lot of young general contractors and skilled construction workers left the industry, and those that stayed are not being replaced,” Ruben explains. “By bringing 21st-century technology into construction, it’s our hope that we can attract a whole new generation of workers who might be going into programming or other fields, but who in the past would have gone to construction, and we need back in the industry.”

Ruben stresses that Mighty Building’s aim is not “to replace jobs”, but to solve the problem caused by the lack of a construction workforce sizable enough to

solve the housing crisis, as well as reduce the risks associated with the industry.

“House framing is the second most dangerous job in America after mining,” he explains. “It’s responsible for 4,000 injuries and deaths a year. We’re taking that aspect and handing it over to the 3D printer.”

However, the printing process is only the beginning.

After a house is printed, it goes into a robotic finishing cell, which has received a 3D scan of the home to make sure that the printed object matches the original design. Although these finishing cells use traditional industrial robotic arms, Ruben’s team had to design a unique platform to allow the robotic arms to reach every part of the homes.

“With those milling heads, we can leave the lines you get with printing, we can mill it down into a smooth stone-like finish, or even mimic brickwork,” he says.

“Additionally, we’re working on a spray attachment to spray coatings, like stucco paint primer, and automate that as well as automate the pouring of the foam insulation into the interior cavities.”

Despite the innovative nature of Mighty Building’s solutions, the greatest issues that the company has faced have not been technical but regulatory.

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House framing is the second most dangerous job in America after mining.

It’s responsible for 4,000 injuries and deaths a year. We’re taking that aspect and handing it over to the 3D printer”

construction industry,” Ruben says. “It’s understandable; their building codes are literally written in blood. They exist because things went wrong and people got hurt and died.”

The high death toll of construction work has made the industry very risk-averse.

However, innovation requires risk. Mighty Buildings has worked with developers and local authorities to create a framework that allows the industry to evolve while ensuring workers’ safety. The result was the addition of UL3401, a 3D printed building construction evaluation 24

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methodology, to the 2021 International Residential Code. UL3401 is an adoptable appendix, meaning that any other country or state can directly add it to their regulations. Mighty Buildings is currently the only company to have been certified in California under this code.

“It’s really important for us that we’re leading the charge to create the regulatory space to ensure the safety of the entire industry, not just ourselves,” Ruben says. “If another 3D printing company has a catastrophic failure and someone gets hurt, that’s not just going

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to reflect poorly on them, it’s going to set the entire industry back decades.”

However, safety concerns are not the only aspect of 3D printed houses that is heavily regulated. The state of California has one of the world’s strictest energy efficiency and environmental standards, known as Title 24. Although this is something that might put off other construction companies from setting up in this area, Mighty Buildings welcomes the harsh regulations.

“We could have set up somewhere like Texas or another place that would have let us do anything,” Ruben says. “But we were always looking at it from a longterm view of ‘How do we have an impact at scale?’ By meeting California’s zero energy net standards, we can then easily expand to other states and countries.”

As a zero-waste process, 3D printing is inherently sustainable. However, in Ruben’s opinion, there is still room to

improve the end-of-life of Mighty Building’s homes.

“If you’re not worth thinking about end-of-life from the very beginning, you’re going to have an incredibly stale product through those first two phases of the life cycle and then lose it all in the back end because it all goes to landfill,” he says.

To avoid this as well as reach its goal of becoming carbon negative by 2035, Mighty Buildings is currently researching and testing more sustainable materials to use in the printing and insulating of its homes. Some options that it’s currently assessing are recycled fillers, biologically-derived polymers and even syn gases, which can be burnt to produce clean electricity. This research investment is possible thanks to the latest fundraiser round carried by the company.

At the end of last year, Mighty Buildings raised $30 million in a Series A funding round led by Khosla Ventures. The

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Sustainability is really about balancing people, planet and profit”

startup plans to use these funds to scale its facilities to be able to produce 1,000 units per year by the end of 2021 and develop new five-storey house designs.

In order to be capable of meeting that demand, the company needs to expand its 50,000 square foot facility.

“Our vision is to create what we call ‘Mighty Factories’ around the world in partnership with local developers 26

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and builders to really optimise for that market,” Ruben says. “We recognise that California is one of the most expensive markets in the world, and we don’t want to be exporting California costs to places where it doesn’t make sense.”

In August 2020, the average price of a single-family home in California reached a record $706,900. In contrast, Mighty Building’s homes sell at a range of between

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$115,000 and $285,000. Ruben states that these prices could be significantly reduced for areas where the cost of production was lower than that of California.

“Sustainability is really about balancing people, planet and profit,” Ruben says. “It’s very important that we address the affordability and sustainability issues over the whole lifetime of a building.”

Although Ruben doesn’t believe that 3D printed houses will be “truly mainstream” in five years’ time, he does hope that they will become less of a shock to people that hear about it.

“It won’t be something that people look at and be like, ‘Oh, that’s really exciting! No one has done that before’.

They will say: ‘Look at the latest 3D printed house!”

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GLOBAL GOOD

Vodafone offers free data to UK business Vodafone is offering free connectivity to businesses in the UK because of the impact of COVID-19. Free broadband for the remainder of the year will be on offer to companies with up to 50 employees - although customers will need to sign up to a 36-month contract. The deal comes on the basis of new research from Vodafone partner Enterprise Nation, a UK small business community network

US Treasury targeted in suspected Russian cyberattack The United States’ Treasury and Commerce Department have suffered a significant cyberattack which exposed its email servers.

The authors of the attack are suspected to be hackers working for the Russian government. The U.S. has issued an emergency order telling all federal civilian agencies to disconnect from SolarWinds, a computer network tool that is being exploited by “malicious actors”

Ola to open the world’s biggest electric scooter factory

GLOBAL GOOD In case you missed them, we’ve debriefed six of the most interesting Tech For Good stories from the last four weeks

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Ola, the Indian ride-sharing firm, has announced plans to invest $326m into setting up an electric scooter factory in Tamil Nadu. Backed by Japan’s Softbank Group, Ola claims it will be “the world’s largest electric manufacturing facility”. Ola says the factory will initially provide 2m electric scooters. The Indian government is pushing automakers to move to electric vehicles to reduce pollution

NEWS DEBRIEF

EU publishes new drone rules The European Union has published a new set of rules to regulate drone use. The rules have been accepted by all members states, as well as Norway, Iceland and the United Kingdom. The rules remove the distinction between commercial and recreational use of drones and facilitate the identification of its owners, as all drones will need to be registered with the relevant aviation authority in order to fly

Japan presents asteroid samples collected by the Hayabusa2 capsule

Baidu to make electric cars Baidu and Geely have confirmed they will create a new company for “intelligent” electric vehicles. The EVs will utilise Geely’s electric vehicle architecture through further detail was sparse. Baidu adds its name to the list of Chinese tech companies exploring the automotive space

The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) has opened the Hayabusa2 capsule, confirming that it contains asteroid samples. The samples belong to the asteroid Ryugu, located more than 190 miles from Earth, where Hayabusa2 landed last year. “A black granular sample believed to be derived from the asteroid Ryugu was confirmed inside the sample container,” JAXA said in a short statement

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CLOSING THE GENDER GAP

Kevin Stenson, CEO of STEM education charity The Smallpeice Trust, tells Tech For Good why he is committed to inspiring more females into engineering

INTERVIEW BY: Daniel Brigham

T

FG: Give us a bit of background on the Smallpeice Trust and your role there?

Stenson: So we’re a 50-year-old charity that was created by a wonderful doctor, Cosby Smallpeice, who sold an engineering company and gave away 10% of his personal fortune to create a charity that exists to widen the engineering talent pipeline as much as possible to ensure that we can recruit the engineers that the UK actually needs. I’ve been chief executive here for seven and a half years, and we have a particular focus on female students and also on less-advantaged students to encourage them into the engineering pipeline.

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CLOSING THE GENDER GAP

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Currently, only 12% of engineers are female.

We’re really good at recruiting from half of the population but we need to recruit from 100% of the population” Kevin Stenson

We do that through a number of activities, so we have one-day programmes that we deliver into schools and we have courses that we run, which are currently online due to the pandemic. We also have a brilliant Arkwright Engineering Scholarship Programme for talented 16-18 year olds. All of these are to help young people see the application of STEM subjects in the real world, to help them link to a career in engineering, to then help them develop competencies that will be useful in that career.

TFG: Has it always been the Trust’s mission statement to target less advantaged children and women?

Stenson: So that that’s very much my mission statement. I joined in 2013 and the year I joined, we had 30% females on residential courses. We now have 50% females on our residential courses.

I want girls to see engineering as a career that is open to 100% of the population.

Currently, only 12% of engineers are female. We’re really good at recruiting from half of the population but we need to recruit from 100% of the population.

TFG: It’s a very broad question, but how can you explain why that disparity still exists?

Stenson: I think it’s to do with a lack of female role models. If you ever ask

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CLOSING THE GENDER GAP

a young person to name a famous engineer they’ll come up with Dyson, if you’re lucky. Maybe Elon Musk. You very rarely get anyone who names a female engineer as a role model. We’ve surveyed parents, and what you see is that particularly the male parent will see engineering as something that their son can do, but not something that their daughter can do. And similarly with female parents, they will see that engineering as something that a daughter could do, but it’s more likely to be a son.

TFG: It’ll take quite a cultural shift to change perceptions. Is it a matter of education?

Stenson: You need to challenge stereotypes, full stop. Female students need to

believe that engineering is something that they can do, which is why it’s so important that on our courses, we get to a 50% gender split. We also run female-only courses, and all of the role model engineers that they come into contact with will be women. From an Arkwright Scholarship perspective, which is where you’ll see the future leaders in engineering, we’re very keen to increase the number of women that we have going through that programme. This year 45% of our Arkwright scholars are female, which is just superb. A future engineering leader who ends up sitting on a board and leading a company starts to then show the following generation that anything is possible, and that then feeds back through the entire education system.

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TFG: For things to change, do you need everyone pulling in the same direction?

Stenson: Absolutely. We work with partners who will effectively sponsor programmes that are for female students.

We have lots of wonderful companies like the Royal Air Force, who work with us to ensure that 50% of the students who take part in a course are female. They all recognise the need for a sea-change to engage female students to come on courses, or you will not solve the engineering problem because you will still reinforce the stereotype that engineering is for boys, and that’s just not the case.

It doesn’t lead to good engineering technology solutions because the products you design need to reflect the society that will ultimately use them, which is why you need diversity in engineering.

TFG: That raises the point about the longterm implication of the gender gap – that engineering and design and technology will reflect only 50% of the population.

Stenson: That’s right. Men end up designing products for men. And what you actually want is a diverse STEM industry, where you’ve got people from all walks of life who bring different thinking, different innovation approaches, and you end up with better products and better ways to solve societal and economic challenges. And if you have the 34

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full representation of society trying to solve problems, then you’ve got a much better chance of solving society’s problems. But if you have men exclusively designing products and design solutions, then you will always have design solutions from a male perspective.

TFG: In the seven years you’ve been chief executive there, has the number of female students going into engineering jobs increased?

Stenson: When I started it was 9%, and now it’s 12%. There’s obviously more

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to do. If you look at numbers around Europe, we are one of the worst, if not the worst, performing country in terms of the gender mix in engineering. So there’s something at societal level in the UK, because other countries have shown that there should be no difference between males and females moving into STEM roles.

TFG: After all of that hard work, it must be a concern that a study from Engineering UK found the pandemic has deepened gender differences in career

aspirations in STEM, with just 37% of girls likely to consider a career in engineering compared to 65% of boys?

Stenson: If you think about what’s happening during this period, you have children who are home-schooled. So what is the impact of engagement in STEM subjects away from your teacher? Does this highlight the importance of the teacher in STEM subjects, and where that can take you to? What you traditionally see is that girls tend to not choose physics at A-Level as a building-block subject to engineering unless they know they’re ISSUE 07

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really good at it. So that’s about confidence in your ability in that subject. From our own surveys, STEM subjects are seen as being academically hard. And therefore, is there a confidence issue?

With so much already stacked against young girls choosing STEM subjects, does this become another reason to not pursue it – without a teacher really encouraging them one-to-one. We’ve removed that teaching element and the ability of somebody to help a person 36

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grasp the topic. And I think the ability of the teacher to have the student engaged in physics, as a particular example, is fundamentally important.

TFG: What do you think the long-term impact of the pandemic will be for STEM roles?

Stenson: I think the pandemic has a massive potential to raise the importance of technology and engineering. If you think of what has enabled remote

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learning, it has been driven by technology. The drive to create more ventilators at the start of the pandemic used engineers and technicians from the motorsport industry, while the Nightingale hospitals were built by teams of army engineers.

Obviously there’s also lots of STEM work going on in creating the vaccines. On a broader level, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, they’re all technologies that have enabled companies to do incredibly well.

I think if we can harness that and raise the profile of what STEM and technology and engineering has done, you have an opportunity to inspire young people.

TFG: Leaders in tech often talk about how roles in their sphere are growing rapidly, but that there’s a skills shortage in education because kids just aren’t being educated in those sort of roles yet.

Have you found that?

Stenson: I have. Take cars of the future. The least impressive thing about the cars of the future will be that it’s a car, the most impressive thing about it will be that it’s an autonomous vehicle that drives itself. And that requires computer scientists, and there’s a shortage of computer scientists at the moment, which is a branch of engineering. The government has pumped £83 million into training computer science teachers so that you can educate the children

What you actually want is a diverse STEM industry, where you’ve got people from all walks of life who bring different thinking, different innovation approaches, and you end up with better products and better ways to solve societal and economic challenges” of the future to have the skills that you need. There’s clearly a shortage of technology skills and you could fill Wembley Stadium every year with a shortage of engineers – each year there’s a shortage of 80,000 engineers.

TFG: Would you say you have enough support from the government and from within the STEM industry to close the gender gap?

Stenson: There’s always more that industry and the government could do.

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There’s clearly a shortage of technology skills and you could fill Wembley Stadium every year with a shortage of engineers – each year there’s a shortage of 80,000 engineers” that they could do to provide the role models, the context, the funding to enable more of this activity. And that will be the challenge. It will be really easy in the next two years, when everyone’s having to cut back on what is possible in terms of what you can afford to do as an organisation, to cut back on working with young people. But it’s essential that we continue to support young people to meet the needs of STEM and tech industries.

I think the government could do more in terms of its support of STEM activities. It has funded a new code, which encourages organisations to work 38

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together and that’s a welcome opportunity. But in terms of the government’s ability to fund projects, to specifically engage in people in engineering, that is essential. But of course that’s against the backdrop of the largest debts the country has ever seen. But what the government can do, and will do, is invest in big capital infrastructure projects to stimulate the economy. And that’s how the government can help inspire the next generation of engineers, both male and female.

TFG: How is the Smallpeice Trust ensuring that less-advantaged children have

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the chance to become engineers?

Stenson: So we specifically target less-advantaged children. So we’ve moved to a position where half of the children who take part in our programmes now do so free of charge.

That will, I’m sure, face a challenge from COVID if less money becomes available.

But what we have seen is that where we’ve had prolonged programmes of interventions with young people, we see wonderful examples where students from non-selective state schools who are less advantaged will out-perform compared to other students who would take part in a similar programme.

We’ve got a wonderful programme specifically for less-advantaged children that starts at year nine and looks to support them for a five-year programme to provide them with the types of engineering enrichment activities that other children would take for granted. And the specific aim of that is to raise aspirations in those young people to have them access higher-level roles.

Turn the page for an interview with Arkwright Scholar Anoushka Patel

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Breaking the vicious circle Arkwright Engineering Scholar Anoushka Patel tells us about her experience at the Smallpeice Trust, creating a global COVID-19 entrepreneurial challenge aged 18, and her views on the gender gap

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’ve always been interested in STEM, all the way through the whole of secondary school. I’ve been really passionate about understanding the impact that STEM can have on solving society’s biggest problems. And that’s why I applied for the Arkwright Scholarship, through the Smallpeice Trust. It provided me with the funds to embark on my own initiatives, whether that’s within school or outside of school. In addition, it also provided a really extensive network of other engineers and engineering leaders. And that was really invaluable for me.

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ANOUSHKA PATEL

It’s definitely accelerated my engineering journey and it provided me with the funds to start my school’s first robotics club, which inspired me to continue with outreach to younger students, especially younger girls. From that I was inspired to start a technology and ethics forum within my school, then that developed into a movement which I’m currently working on called the Tech Switch. I founded it with a friend, Adam Flanagan, who I met at a McKinsey internship, and I used my scholarship fund to co-found it.

Through Tech Switch we started the COVID Challenge last April, encouraging

university students to create innovative tech solutions, addressing the social and economic hardships stemming from COVID-19.

It was basically a hackathon, and it was entirely virtual. We had over 220 people enter and we put them in random WhatsApp groups and told them to work together and come back in three days with a pitch. And they all did. And that was really, really incredible to see. So we ended up with 32 different tech-based projects, across 85 different disciplines, from 50-plus universities over five different countries. And 51% of the people were female, which was great as well.

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We ended up with 32 different tech-based projects, across 85 different disciplines, from 50-plus universities over five different countries. And 51% of the people were female, which was great as well” The competition was judged externally, including a member of MIT’s COVID-response unit, founders of startups, entrepreneurs, and leaders in the field, including Kevin Stenson – CEO of the Smallpiece Trust. Many of the projects are still going now, and the winner was Urbani.

Urbani is an immunity passport, and at the time back in April, this was quite a novel idea. They came up with this two weeks before the government started discussing it. It’s an app that allows people to plan their movements in order to avoid places where many individuals have reported having contracted symptoms over the past 48 hours.

The Sixth Form winner was really impressive as these were Year 12 and 13 students. They created an app called HomeMade, which offers you recipes to minimise supermarket trips by encouraging more efficient use of ingredients that you have in the house. So if people are isolating, or don’t want to risk going to the supermarket, they can spend more effectively.

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Tech Switch is a platform to empower young leaders of the future to act with moral, financial and technological astuteness. I think young people have a really powerful role to play in helping businesses face up to the challenges and opportunities resulting from disruptive technologies. There’s a news feed,

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articles, interviews and I’m starting a podcast as well.

I’m currently studying at the Dyson Institute. When I joined I wanted to make a positive impact, and I was surprised to see the emphasis put on corporate social environmental responsibility, and how much say I’ve been able to have on the sustainability within the design process.

The James Dyson Foundation do a lot of good work in schools, so I’m trying to create a conversation between them and the Smallpeice Trust because I think their values are very much aligned.

They both want to get more people into engineering.

I’m also head of diversity and wellbeing at the Dyson Institute. So I’m looking at how we can increase the variety of schools that we recruit from and how we increase accessibility for people from diverse backgrounds, which I think is so important. And although I’m the only female in the team I’m in, Dyson are recognising how important and impactful it is to have diversity in their teams, and I’d like to think I can help push for that.

I have thought a lot about why there’s a gender gap in STEM roles in the UK. I would say there are three key solutions. So the first one is to approach the recruitment departments of large

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If young females don’t see women-led startups being invested in then that will discourage young women from pursuing a career in STEM”

engineering corporations and also universities offering engineering courses. Recruitment processes need to be looked at and sorted out, especially with increasing use of automated video interviews. Many engineering companies use AI to analyse people’s performance. But the data that they use is actually looking at past traits of successful people at the company. So if you take a predominantly male industry 44

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like engineering, you’re not getting as many females getting into senior leadership roles. Therefore, any characteristics which are similar to that of a woman would not be seen to be successful by the AI. So it introduces discrimination.

And that goes for people with disabilities and people from different cultures.

Mentorship is also really important, and that can be achieved either by charities like the Smallpeice Trust or

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within a company. I think the Smallpeice Trust and Arkwright have done a really great job providing those mentorship opportunities and I genuinely can’t stress how important and useful mentoring has been for me personally.

I also think venture capital firms need to invest in female-led startups.

Although that feels a long way from choosing a university degree, it’s

a vicious circle: if young females don’t see women-led startups being invested in then that will discourage young women from pursuing a career in STEM, which means you also don’t have as many mentors. So it’s all about breaking that vicious circle.

Anoushka Patel was talking to Daniel Brigham

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CHANGING CHARITY FOR THE BETTER The charity sector has historically lagged behind the corporate world when it comes to digital transformation. We speak to Matt Haworth, co-founder and CEO of Reason Digital, to find out why, and to get his thoughts on what should happen so that technology can better support this essential function of society

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AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer

ver recent years, technology has dramatically altered the business sphere. Companies exploring and realising the potential of tech have been able to imagine a very different future, one where new tools can positively impact customers and employees - and boost profits.

But in the charity sector, the landscape has been very different. Historically risk-averse and with precious resources poured almost exclusively into their services, charities have largely struggled 46

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to embrace digital. The 2020 Charity Digital Skills Report, commissioned by Catalyst, Skills Platform and Zoe Amar Digital and published last October, found that more than half of charities in the United Kingdom don’t even have in place a digital strategy.

It is a problem that Matt Haworth has made his life’s work to solve. As a teenager, Haworth was obsessed with a nascent system called “the internet”.

You might have heard of it. At the age

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Culturally, we criticise charities too much for trying new things, for investing in things, for taking risk - and those are all things that we praise businesses for” Matt Haworth

of 20 he started freelancing as a tech consultant. Now he is CEO of Reason Digital, an organisation he co-founded to help charities and other socially progressive organisations transform for the digital age.

“Charities have found themselves behind the corporate world when it comes to digital, and that’s because of a perfect mix of difficult circumstances,” Haworth tells Tech For Good.

“I’m a trustee of a couple of charities, so I know how difficult it is to protect resources. It can be nerve-wracking to invest in anything that feels like a 48

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risk. Digital at one point felt like a risk.

I would say it’s not a risk anymore but that mindset persists.

“Then you’ve got the makeup of the charity sector at a senior level. We still have a relative lack of diversity around digital skills and capacity. And also, culture. We criticise charities too much for trying new things, for investing in things, for taking risk - and those are all things that we praise businesses for.”

Yet Haworth sees light at the end of the tunnel. Firstly, for over a decade Reason Digital has architected some groundbreaking solutions and collabo-

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rated with major charities like Save The Children, Macmillan Cancer Support and Parkinson’s UK. But at a wider level, he believes the COVID-19 pandemic has in some ways forced the hand of many charities. Now they simply have to get moving when it comes to tech.

“At the start of the pandemic there was nervousness in the sector because income from mass fundraising events was just going to go,” Haworth says.

“The reaction was to really draw the pursestrings in and manage that, but then we saw demand rising from those who said: ‘we need to keep providing

services, we have a lot of vulnerable people, how can we go about doing that with these rules and restrictions?’ And really one of the only ways was digital.”

This has resulted in a period of rapid change and quick learning for many charities. The Charity Digital Skills Report concluded that last year was “pivotal” to the sector’s future. From Haworth’s experience, those that had been one step ahead with their tech plans before COVID-19 struck were able to be more resilient in the face of its challenges.

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Overall it’s a long journey but COVID-19 has accelerated the digital transformation of charities. No matter where they are on that curve, everyone has got further down” large majority are excellent at utilising web-based tech to promote their projects and to run fundraising campaigns. But Howarth believes the next great leap needs to be to use digital to optimise their service delivery.

Most of Reason Digital’s client work has been around helping those who may have been behind the curve to adapt their services for remote, online charity.

A unique example he shares is from its collaboration with the Scout Association in the UK. “Previously we’ve worked with the Scout Association on systems that help its leaders plan their scouting activities to make sure children get their badges and take advantage of the curriculum scouts can offer. Obviously that changed dramatically during lockdown, so we worked on a way to do scouting on the web, sharing activities online and things like that. It’s the same but different.

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“Overall it’s a long journey but COVID-19 has accelerated the digital transformation of charities. No matter where they are on that curve, everyone has got further down.”

Another case study Haworth highlights is Reason Digital’s work with AgeUK. He believes its programme to blend current technologies with artificial intelligence to optimise its “Call In Time” befriending service is the perfect example of a digital investment that enabled delivery at scale during COVID-19.

The system automatically places calls on a telephone network after matching volunteer befrienders with isolated and lonely older people. Robots then listen to the calls and are able to flag conversations that may have shown safeguarding risks. The technology now enables AgeUK to process more than 1,000 calls each week.

“There were something like 1.3 million chronically isolated older people in the UK

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before COVID-19, so there was already an epidemic of loneliness, and COVID19’s made it so much worse,” says Haworth. “So our team has been flat out on improving and scaling up that system.

The fact that AgeUK has embraced that technology is really quite cool.”

One thing Haworth believes would accelerate similar innovation at a macro level is collaboration between charities. In fact, he calls collaboration the “sleeping giant” of the sector.

In 2019, Reason Digital announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with four charities - Parkinson’s UK, the Stroke Association, Muscular Dystrophy UK and the MS Society - to build a “Digital Health

Assistant”. The machine learning-based tool is designed to offer a tailored coaching service to those suffering from long-term health conditions. All four charities are now using the solution at scale but Haworth believes none of them would have been able to develop the Digital Health Assistant on their own because of a lack of budget and talent.

“There are a lot of practical issues, particularly around technology, but collaboration is where it’s at,” says Haworth. “Private companies have the profit motive, that’s their secret weapon, but what charities have is that everybody fundamentally wants the same thing.

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There is so much human time and human potential in the charity sector poured into doing admin, dealing with basic questions that could easily be answered in a more automated way.

It’s not about automating everything, it’s not about turning everything into robots. It’s about freeing up human potential”

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“There are bits and pieces happening, and you’ve got bodies like Catalyst, which has drawn together a lot of funders and provides funding and support to the charity sector around digital. It is effectively a cross-sector collaboration to accelerate the adoption of social technology. So we are seeing things, but is it enough? Absolutely not.

There needs to be way more. I think we’ve started to uncover what some of the barriers are through the Digital Health Assistant project, so they are surmountable.”

What does Haworth believe a tech-enabled charity sector might look like in the future? He sees it as ultimately empowering the individuals who have been motivated to work in an area where they

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A service user of Leonard Cheshire using an application prototype built by Reason Digital can deliver positive change to people.

Too often, he says, charity employees are bogged down by menial tasks.

“There is so much human time and human potential in the charity sector poured into doing admin, dealing with basic questions that could easily be answered in a more automated way. It’s not about automating everything, it’s not about turning everything into robots. It’s about freeing up human potential.”

Haworth is a former UK Digital Entrepreneur of the Year but prefers any praise to go the way of his team.

Reason Digital is expanding quickly and boasts a range of awards for its work, and Haworth himself is engaging more

directly with charities to keep himself close to the issues that matter as his business grows.

Does he still have the fire inside to continue his mission, the same fire that as a young man made him rail against the idea of “getting out of bed every morning to make some rich old white guy slightly richer”? The answer is “yes”, without any shadow of doubt.

“There is a lifetime’s work here, in terms of the amount of time it’s going to take to assist the sector transforming,” he says. “I’m very happy and proud to play my part in that, so I can’t see that changing. I love what I do and I love the change that we bring about.”

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TEENAGE TECH STORIES

Teenage tech stories Each month, Tech for Good speaks to one teenage entrepreneur about their incredible achievements in the world of tech, and how they’re contributing to making the world a better place

Name: Freddie Howells

Age: 15 Born: Wales, UK Achievements: Freddie is the creator of Door Pi and Fall Alert, two technological projects that support the elderly. He was also named as the 2019 and 2020 Big Bang Junior Engineer of the Year and is a finalist of AbilityNet’s 2020 Tech4Good Awards

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FREDDIE HOWELLS

Image: BT

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got interested in coding in Year 4, when a family friend of ours introduced me to Raspberry Pi. Soon after that, my mum and that family friend signed me up to a coding club where I learned the basics of coding and practised with Scratch and Python.

I came up with the idea for Fall Alert because of my great-aunt Pat. She is 88, lives alone, and has dementia. One day she fell and forgot to press her emergency button. She was found several hours later, still on the floor, by her carers.

I thought I could create a system that would automatically alert them if she’d fallen rather than her having to press anything.

Fall Alert uses a Raspberry Pi connected to an accelerometer. It is

programmed with an algorithm that will automatically detect when the person falls and sends a text message to the family or carers.

The most difficult part was creating the fall algorithm because I had to make sure that it wouldn’t trigger any false positives. I created a new algorithm that would only work when the person fell, not just on a step that was really hard, or going down the stairs.

I worked out that when a person falls there’s a drop in single-vector magnitude. Then, on impact, there’s a spike in single-vector magnitudes, then a subsequent period of inactivity when they’re lying on the floor. Finally, you’ve got a change in orientation because they’re lying on their side. That’s how I programmed the algorithm to detect a fall.

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At the moment I am working on shrinking Fall Alert down and changing the design, from a belt to a bracelet, so it’s less intrusive. After I have done that, I’ll hopefully take it to market, so I can actually help people with it.

The Door Pi system is a facial recognition door entry system that I also developed for my great-aunt. It’s got a database of known faces that it will allow into the house. When it sees any of these faces, it will automatically open the door.

My great-aunt had been getting confused, letting in door-to-door salespeople and signing up for stuff she didn’t need through them.

I thought I would make a system where she wouldn´t even have to get up to open the door; it would just let in her carers and her friends and family without her having to do anything.

The hardest part of that project was making sure that the algorithm recognised the right faces. I looked through millions of tutorials online and I could never seem to get one right. I eventually found one that I could make work.

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The Tech4Good and Big Bang competitions have been really helpful in developing my projects. I’ve met lots of great people who have given me really great advice and helped me bring my projects forward.

I’d love to speak to Alan Turing, even though he’s not alive, because I think it was really cool how he managed to create the Enigma machine. I would like to hear his view on how artificial intelli-

FREDDIE HOWELLS

gence is developing now and how he’d think it’s going to develop.

AI really excites me because I think it’s really amazing how it can easily learn lots of different things and then store that information to help people, especially in the medical and caring fields. For example, it can be really helpful for monitoring people to make sure that they are okay, like what I’m doing with Fall Alert.

My main inspiration is my greataunt Pat and people who I see who are struggling. I’d see them and think: ‘I can help them. I will make a system that will solve that problem.’

In 10 years, I would love to see Fall Alert out in the world helping lots of people. I would also like to be doing a Computer Science degree at university.

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EXPERT INSIGHT

EXPERT INSIGHT: UPDATING THE OUTDATED Christopher Pommerening, Founder and Chief Empowerment Officer of LearnLife, on why education needs to be dragged into the 21st century via an open learning ecosystem

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ur education system is designed for a world that no longer exists. The advancements in technology have meant an exponential quantity of information lies at our fingertips, and yet education systems globally still focus on rote learning and the acquisition of facts.

This is an exciting age where young people should finally have the option to move beyond tedious and repetitive learning practises. The ease of access to information frees young people to learn real life skills, which can be used to thrive in all aspects of life, not just for passing exams. Yet despite the huge number of technological and social innovations made around the world,

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CHRISTOPHER POMMERENING

school curricula continue to conform to outdated methods.

We must throw away the constraints of the past by overhauling learning, to ensure our young people receive the very best education and in turn, the very best start in life. The focus should be on personal self-determined learning driven by purpose and passions, that explores new competencies and enables pupils to develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Only this way will young people be prepared for their futures, post-education.

It is our mission with Learnlife, and [RE] LEARN, our recently held learning innovation festival, to demonstrate that it is possible to change the attitudes towards, and methods of, learning in a profound and engaging way. Our driving force and key aim is that education should be about helping children learn how to thrive as people. This can only happen through collaboration and co-creation - no one person has the answer - which is why we strive to bring together leaders, educators and innovators to ensure learning continues to evolve alongside society.

It is predicted that by 2030, as many as 800 million people could be displaced by automation and 65% of today’s youth will need to either find or create work in areas that do not yet exist. These seismic developments prove why taking

Despite the huge number of technological and social innovations made around the world, school curricula continue to conform to outdated methods” action now is so crucial, if the learners of tomorrow are to keep pace with a rapidly changing world.

Our belief is that the solution lies in creating an open learning ecosystem that spreads a new, lifelong learning paradigm composed of digital platforms and physical hubs. Through this hybrid approach, our initial aim at LearnLife is to empower 100 million learners and 100,000 schools by 2030, enabling them to integrate creative learning elements into their own projects. This offers educators the ability to update their own curricula to match the needs of today’s world, allowing them to know they are preparing their pupils properly for the future.

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society, but to also deal with other large gaps in education, such as social and emotional learning. Young people should be taught how to deal with mental health issues and how to interact in a positive way with each other. The spike in mental health problems over the last decade proves that this is more important than ever, yet still it is hardly touched on in schools worldwide.

Another important part of this process is building a large community of change leaders and learning innovators who can

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accelerate the collaborative research process and the development of a new learning paradigm. There needs to be a constant open conversation between educators and industry leaders, as only then will the skills being learned in schools match the skills that will be needed in the real word. The traditional system, with its focus on standardisation, examinations and delivering content, bears little relevance to the emerging workplaces. Therefore, by starting a conversation between deci-

CHRISTOPHER POMMERENING

There needs to be a constant open conversation between educators and industry leaders, as only then will the skills being learned in schools match the skills that will be needed in the real word”

sion-makers in education and the innovators guiding the future of work, we can ensure that schools are consistently providing young people with the skills they will genuinely need for their future.

The movement has to be grassroots and it is Learnlife’s mission to be a catalyst within this movement for change. United, we will initiate change for good, but divided the status quo in schooling will grind to a slow and damaging stop. We have the opportunity to shape the future of learning – and Learnlife endeavours to be a community

with an optimistic picture of what modern learning could be and the ability to show it in practice. We envision a future where every human is part of a lifelong learning community that empowers them to co-create a positive future.

There are so many problems ahead for our younger generations, from automation to the climate crisis, so we owe it to them to ensure we equip them in the best way we can. In the end, these are all challenges that can be overcome, but only if we work together to make the necessary changes.

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PROTECTING THE KIDNEYS OF THE EARTH

PROTECTING THE KIDNEYS OF THE EARTH Missing Pokémon GO? Want to stop climate change? We speak to the creators of LimKnow, an app that uses augmented reality to teach users about the importance of wetlands to the health of the Earth, and the threats they face AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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A

lthough often overlooked, the kidneys are some of the most important organs in the human body. They filter blood to remove waste and keep us healthy. In nature, wetlands carry out a similar task. Wetlands filter water by absorbing polluting elements such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which has led them to be considered by experts as the “kidneys of the Earth”.

As transition zones between land and water, wetlands are some of the most productive ecosystems in the world.

Their biodiversity is comparable to that of coral reefs and rainforests. In fact, wetlands are the natural habitat of 40% of the world’s species, 25% of which are now at risk of extinction, according to a study by the United Nations. In addition to their contribution to the planet’s biodiversity, wetlands are fundamental for human life as they protect coastlines, mitigate floods and provide freshwater, directly or indirectly, to almost half of the world’s population.

So if wetlands are so important, why do we keep destroying them?

Human activity has destroyed approximately 87% of the global wetlands resources that existed in 1700, according to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.

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When a wetland suffers damage, it can never be restored to its original condition.

Conservation is the only way forward” Sudeshna Gupta as illegal encroachments, deforestation, overfishing, waste dumping and the introduction of invasive species. These adverse changes to wetlands are estimated to result in over $20 trillion losses of ecosystem services every year.

“Wetlands are mostly considered wastelands around the world,” says Sudeshna Gupta, who is currently pursuing a PhD in Lake Management from the Indian Institute of Technology. “But, when a wetland suffers damage, it can never be restored to its original condition. Conservation is the only way forward.”

In order to protect the wetlands from her local area, Guwahati in north-west India,

PROTECTING THE KIDNEYS OF THE EARTH

Wetlands of Guwahati, India Sudeshna teamed up with Android developer Sangeeta Gupta and Blend 3D artist Aastha Shrivastava to create LimKnow, a citizen science app for lake management. LimKnow uses augmented reality (AR) technology to create awareness about the importance of wetlands, becoming India’s first-ever lake management AR app.

LimKnow allows people to learn about the different species of animals and plants that live in the Guwahati wetlands and provides a brief summary of the importance of each one to the ecosystem.

It doesn’t want to be a dictionary, but a learning resource, where users leave

with one or two keywords about each species. This section is called beels and pukhuris, which stands for ‘wetlands and lakes’ in the local language. “A basic concept about LimKnow is ‘Think locally, act locally’, and that’s why we chose that name,” Sudeshna says.

LimKnow wants to engage citizens in wetland conservation in a “fun way”. To do that, its founders have included features in the app that allow users to test their knowledge about the wetland’s ecosystem, report possible threats and upload their favourite pictures of the area.

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which accompany users on their learning journey in a way similar to the Pokémons of the video game Pokémon GO. “We saw how interested people are in Pikachu and all the Pokémons, which don’t even exist in the real world,” Sudeshna says. “And we thought that we have so many diverse species in the natural world. Why not let them be in front of you? Why not allow people to interact with them before they become extinct?”

In contrast to the immersive experience that is virtual reality, AR adds digital elements to a live view using a camera so that the user feels they are viewing them through their smartphone’s lens. This illusion directly involves users, making AR experiences far more engaging than their non-AR equivalents. Proof of that is the previously mentioned Pokémon GO

game, which reached a total of 45 million users per day in the summer of 2016. AR is one of the best user retention mechanisms that exist today, as it is as interactive but much more accessible than VR. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the AR market is predicted to reach $60 billion by 2023.

Linknow uses AR to gamify the learning experience. Aastha Shrivastava was the person tasked with the responsibility of creating the 3D models for the Guwahati animals. These 3D models are recreations of species that live in the wetlands, and they pop up on the app after the users have answered a short question. The animals are so realistic that they even have moving shadows.

“3D modelling is much like sculpting,” Aastha says. “To design them, you start

From left to right: Aastha Shrivastava, Sangeeta Gupta and Sudeshna Gupta

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PROTECTING THE KIDNEYS OF THE EARTH

3D modelling is much like sculpting” Aastha Shrivastava with the basic objects, which we call ‘mesh’, like a sphere or a cube and put them together and you modify them to get the desired shape. In the end, you add a ‘material’, which is the colour and texture of the design.”

Aastha used the repository of 3D objects that Google provides to create the animals, but had to adapt these models to incorporate the distinctive features of the species that live in the Guwahati lakes, such as the Asian elephant. Although Aastha is LimKnow’s only 3D artist at the moment, she hopes to become the first of many contributors.

“Since LimKnow is a citizen science project, it was only fair that we made it open-source,” she says. “We have a repository where 3D artists can actually contribute their 3D model designs for species which are found in their area, or they can make the models that are requested by the users.”

Leading the development of the LimKnow app is Sangeeta Gupta. In

addition to working in this project, Sangeeta leads the Facebook Developers Circles, a community with over 6,000 members that aims to bring together developers around the world, and studies a Computer Applications Master at Symbiosis International University. She was looking for a project where she could put her technical skills to use in a way that would bene-

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Guwahati, India fit her community when she stumbled upon the critical situation that wetlands are facing.

“I strongly believe that technology doesn’t exist alone,” Sangeeta says.

“It’s about solving a problem in a group, and that’s how open-source communities also work. It’s not about one person building the whole thing for the entire 68

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world. It’s about building things together and creating small impacts in your local ecosystems.”

The LimKnow code is also open-source, so although the project is local, anyone can contribute to the database or adapt it for their area’s wetlands. Sangeeta built it using the Android Studio Environment and leveraged the Google ARCode and

PROTECTING THE KIDNEYS OF THE EARTH

We want to create a community of involved and informed citizens for lake management” Sangeeta Gupta

Sceneform libraries to create the experience of interacting with virtual 3D wetland animals. The app is also able to trace the device’s location, in order to be able to know the area where a picture is taken, or a threat to the wetlands is reported.

“We want to create a community of involved and informed citizens for lake management”, Sangeeta says. “In the

citizen science section they can report the lake’s health, any illegal activities that are happening around the lake and make a request for us to cover any other lakes or contribute to the database.”

Often, a lake’s condition can be seen in plain sight. Instead of having to train experts to use instruments that carefully measure the conditions of each lake ISSUE 07

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which would be ideal, but very costly LimKnow obtains data from what people can see with the naked eye, becoming much more accessible to non-experts.

Through simple observation, people can become involved in the conservation of their local wetlands.

“We are not expecting people to know about wetlands when they install LimKnow,” Sudeshna explains. “We want people to become aware of them by using the app. For example, they can report the colour of the lake or its smell, which are indicators of water quality. If they find a dead animal, that can give us information about the dissolved oxygen content of the lake and indicate that there is a problem with the water body.”

In addition to the dangers posed by human action, wetlands are also threatened by smaller and more natural invaders. The most common ones are harmful algal blooms, which release toxic substances that reduce the dissolved oxygen concentration of the water and kill any other species that inhabit the lake.

“We put pictures of invasive species on the app and ask users to identify how much area of the water body is covered by them,” Sudeshna says. “When they upload pictures of it, we immediately get the location data, so it’s very easy for us to monitor it.”

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Thalaynoi, Thailand At the moment, the LimKnow app has 25 users. All the photographs and reports that they provide are stored on the app and used solely for research purposes. However, the goal is to grow the app and connect it to local government agencies, who can use the information to protect the ecosystems. But this is not an easy challenge, as each Gwarathi lake contains over 250 different species of plants and animals.

PROTECTING THE KIDNEYS OF THE EARTH

“What we have created is a base model,” Sudeshna says. “We have over 6,000 wetlands in Guwahati so a lot of data still has to be incorporated into the app in terms of biodiversity and water quality, and that is only possible with funding.”

Although the goal of completing the wetland species database is still far ahead, the LimKnow app has already become something much more important: a place of community and connec-

tion, where people can come together to protect their local ecosystems.

“What I love about the LimKnow app is it lets people from several different fields build something together,” Sangeeta says. “Common users can learn about wetlands, ecologists can contribute to the database, developers can improve the code, and 3D artists can create AR models. There is community all around.”

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