New technologies have the potential to accelerate a country's development, but a global technology gap remains.
Displaying 1-20 of 77 links
This website provides information on how the organisation Amnesty International uses geospatial technologies to track human rights violations. It provides access to the Science for Human Rights Explorer, a tool that allows users to compare 'before and after' satellite and aerial images of places where human rights violations have occurred. The website also includes a link to Amnesty International's programme Eyes on Syria, an interactive platform that maps information related to human rights abuses in Syria.
This network aims to pool, analyse and share information on nuclear energy as well as practical experience to help improve knowledge and regional cooperation on nuclear safety in Asian countries. It has hubs in China, Korea and Japan, and five national centres in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The website provides information on nuclear power in Asian countries on topics that include waste management, emergency preparedness and education and training. It also publishes newsletters that report on relevant training workshops and meetings.
The Cambridge Nanoscience Centre, home to Cambridge University's Nanoscience group, conducts research on nanowires and nanotubes, dielectrophoresis and nanometre-scale characterisation of electrical properties of conducting polymers.
Its website links to ongoing projects as well as upcoming and past seminars on topics including nanocrystals, self assembly of discrete structures and catalysis by nanogold. The website also hosts an image gallery of nanoscale pictures.
The CNS, based at Arizona State University in the United States, conducts research on the societal implications of nanotechnologies and engages policymakers and businesses in dialogue on these.
The centre publishes books, articles, presentations and reports on key topics and hosts a network of researchers developing and testing new processes of 'anticipatory governance' to understand and govern rapidly emerging areas of nanotechnology.
The CNS-UCSB serves as a network hub for researchers and educators working on the societal issues of nanotechnologies, including historical contexts, innovation processes and risk perception. It provides access to its research results, scientific papers, meeting reports, policy documents and presentations on a range of topics including water.
The centre publishes news on upcoming events and links to other US organisations working on nanotechnology.
ZKI — run by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) — acquires, processes and analyses satellite data to provide information on natural disasters and help guide relief activities. It publishes maps on potential building damage, population density and affected areas for all sorts of disasters including earthquakes, fires, landslides and floods.
ZKI also runs a fire service for Europe and North Africa, based on MODIS sensors.
This website publishes information on how advances in science and new technologies challenge citizenship and invites debate about issues such as the nature of expertise and processes of public participation. It provides links to working papers and other documents, including original research.
The research programme is part of the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability (Citizenship DRC), which is based at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK. Citizenship DRC is made up of a network of researchers, policymakers, practitioners and institutional partners from more than 25 countries.
D-Lab, run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is a programme of academic courses aimed at developing and implementing low-cost technologies to address poverty. Its approach is based on building partnerships and promoting capacity building, local innovation and indigenous knowledge.
The website contains information on its sixteen courses, and projects developed through the programme. Instructions on how to implement certain projects — such as making charcoal from agricultural waste — are also included.
The Dartmouth Flood Observatory, based in the United States, uses remote sensing data to detect, measure and map river discharge and flooding. It publishes rapid response inundation maps during a flood as well as an atlas of large floods from 1985 to present.
Data from the observatory are used by several disaster alert and relief agencies, including Sentinel Asia, Thomson Reuters AlertNet, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Europe's Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System.
The Desert Research Institute is based in Nevada in the United States. Its principal research areas include atmosphere, water and land management – in the United States and in the developing world. The institute is engaged in a project to bring clean water and sanitation to communities in Ghana, Mali and Niger through the West Africa Water Initiative (WAWI). WAWI aims to do this before 2008.
The Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) is a small constellation of remote sensing satellites, built by UK-based Surrey Satellite Technology but individually owned by partner countries including Algeria, China, Nigeria and Turkey.
The DMC satellites provide daily coverage of the earth and were specifically designed to support the logistics of disaster relief. Each partner country gives five per cent of its capacity to free daily imaging of disaster areas for aid agencies. The group as a whole is also signed up to the International Charter for Space in Major Disasters.
Earthscan publishes books and journals on climate change, sustainable development and environmental technology. It offers a free one-hour webcast on relevant topics every month through its website, and these are archived and stored in downloadable formats. It also publishes a blog that includes opinions, news and events, and feeds from other social media — 'tweets' and links to the Earthscan YouTube channel. The website contains a searchable database of publications and an ordering service.
EIFL works with libraries and other partners around the world to increase access to knowledge for research and sustainable community development. One of the programmes run by the organisation, the Public Library Innovation Programme, gives small grants to public libraries in developing countries to implement community development services using information and communication technology (ICT). The programme supports 37 services in 22 countries, as well as studies to evaluate their impact. Projects include using mobile phones to deliver health messages to communities, and providing farmers with access to libraries' online resources on market prices and farm technology. The website publishes news, information on grants, events, case studies and information about the impacts of projects.
EM-DAT, run by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, provides statistics and data on disasters' impact on humans, such as the number of people killed, injured or affected as well as economic damage estimates and disaster-specific aid contributions.
Users can search the database or pull out summary information including graphs to show temporal trends as well as reference maps of disasters by type or date.