Joint talk given during the BrainSTORM session at VUA by Frank van Harmelen and Victor de Boer, with input from Christophe Gueret, Hans Akkermans, Anna Bon.
Enhancing Worker Digital Experience: A Hands-on Workshop for Partners
Web Alliance for Regreening in Africa (W4RA): Voice-based access to Linked Open Market Data in the Sahel
1. Web Alliance for
Regreening in Africa (W4RA)
Frank van Harmelen | Victor de Boer
With input from Christophe Guéret, Hans Akkermans, Anna Bon
2. Regreening
• Knowledge sharing issues
– Distances between rural communities in Sahel
– Infrastructure and access
• Commonly: no electricity, no computer, no internet
• But: mobile and radio
– Lack of relevant content
• Literacy and education
– Languages
Hans Akkermans e-Biz Innovation course, 22 Sep 2011 2
3. Aim: integrate Web with mobile
access & voice services
• service development toolbox, field deployment
in Africa & make a sustainable business out of it
Hans Akkermans e-Biz Innovation course, 22 Sep 2011 3
4. Field pilots in Mali
Web-mobile-voice services
• Field pilot use cases Mali (to start end 2011):
1. Web-based market info by mobile voice service to radio stations for broadcast
2. m-event field organizer facilities Web-mobile-voice
Hans Akkermans e-Biz Innovation course, 22 Sep 2011 4
5. Web in Society:
the big picture R&D questions
• Q1 [immediate]: Can the Web (be made to)
mean something for knowledge sharing even
under very constraining conditions?
– No internet, no computer, no electricity
– Multitude of languages, levels of literacy
• Q2 [Web future]: Can we have a Web of
Speech?
– After all, human communication:
talking >> writing
Hans Akkermans e-Biz Innovation course, 22 Sep 2011 5
7. Not having the Web != Not sharing data
Market prices Educational content
They would benefit from Linked Data
but they can not use it!
And we don't want a new divide, do we?
9. 2) think small, think micro-servers
Not designed for developing countries Designed for developing countries
Multi-core fast 433Mhz x86 CPU
CPU 256MB of RAM
Gigabytes of RAM 1GB of flash
Terabytes of disk storage
Can be solar powered Dust proof
Affordable
14. Digital Divide
Source: ITU Digital Access Index, World's First Global ICT Ranking
15.
16. Voice-based services in a rural African context
• Integrate local community radios and mobile ICT for
knowledge sharing
• Better support and integrate local languages in voice-based
services
– Development of appropriate speech elements (text-to-
speech and Speech recognition)
• Develop a free and open source toolbox for local developers.
• Investigate self-sustainability
– Develop appropriate business models
– In collaboration with local communities.
22. Audio communiqué
• Audio communiqué generated by
concatenating prerecorded phrases
– Each radio host uses own voice (!)
• Text-to-speech where possible
• Currently only for French
• Audio quality is an issue
23. Voice XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<vxml version="2.0" lang="en">
<form>
<prompt bargein="false">
Welcome to RadioMarche!
<audio src=“audio/communique_1_bambara.wav"/>
</prompt>
<option dtmf="1" value=“1">Press one for X</option>
<option dtmf=“2" value=“2">Press two for Y</option>
...
</vxml>
27. Linked Data Cloud
VoiceXML-to-
SPARQL
Market data Linked market data
Voice browser
ClioPatria Linked Data server (Voxeo Evolution)
Web access Voice access