Masters thesis in South Africa??!!

Yup it’s true; I will be heading to South Africa for 10 weeks to do my thesis project to complete my Masters in Information Technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology.  My research area is Information and Communications Technology for Development, (ICT4D) and Human Computer Interaction for Development (HCI4D).  This will be a more technical blog,  my personal blog  is at deanzbro.blogspot.com. 

Where?!
I will be joining the Computer Science department at the University of Cape Town as an international research affiliate working under Prof. Gary Marsden there.
 
What?!
Basically I will be designing an information and alerting service to inform consumers about the quality of the water they drink or use on a daily basis. This falls under a bigger international project called the Aquatest project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and spearheaded by Bristol University which seeks to develop a low‐cost water quality test kit to be used by both water professionals and the general public in developing countries to test and monitor water quality. It also seeks an information management solution that will allow for easy collection and management of water quality data gathered from testing.

Why?!  
Simply informing someone when their water source is contaminated could save a life. Contaminated water is the root cause of numerous diseases such as Diarrhea which claims the life of 1.8 million people a year. In fact it is a major killer among communicable diseases preceded only by respiratory infections and HIV/AIDS (WHO, 2008).  

PLUS it’s a legal requirement! Yup water service providers are required by law to report water quality test data to consumers in an easy to understand manner. In South Africa pretty much none of the water service providers do that. Why? It’s a challenging problem… In a country with eleven official languages and a large illiterate and semi‐illiterate population, how do you present water quality data in a way that is easily understood by all? And what medium is appropriate for disseminating water quality information to consumers given the existing technological constraints?

The answers to those questions, Ha that’s where I come in!! So stay tuned :)