After several telephone conferences earlier this year, the IEEE Humanitarian Technology Challenge (HTC) held its first face-to-face meeting on June 1–2, 2009, attended by roughly equal numbers of interested IEEE “Challenge Volunteers” and a healthy representation from NGO’s (Non-Government Organizations), Universities and business people engaged in humanitarian work. The meetings were held in the National Academy of Engineering facilities. The main organizers were the HTC staff led by Howard Tepper, Project Manager, and Rich Baseil, special consultant to the PM.
     In the two-day meeting the HTC team leaders explained the genesis of the effort as a collaboration of IEEE and IEEE Foundation with the UN Foundation, broadly framed to address the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s). The HTC currently is designed as a pilot program to determine the feasibility of joint programs in which technologies represented by IEEE could be brought to bear on eliminating the worst of world poverty through economic development in two stages covering the periods from now to 2015 and 2015–2025. The technologies could be new innovative developments or new methods of application of existing technologies. Successful development and application requires collaboration with the intended recipients as well as NGO’s and relevant business entities that have on-the-ground familiarity with the local social structures and good working relations with the responsible governmental bodies. This early phase is naturally focused on understanding the local needs and trying to identify appropriate technologies that could be brought to bear.
     Throughout the meeting a range of speakers from the NGO side showed examples of ongoing work in the field. Examples included the UNICEF technology development program showing how a low cost messaging communications system drastically reduced response time for medical decisions in scattered rural areas; a business consulting firm explaining necessary conditions for a sustainable business model in the developing world; a medical doctor showing how a small individual technology effort involving lighting and stable electricity for sterilization immensely improved community surgical clinics in an inner city in India; and many examples of how people currently cope with a lack of electricity in homes (such as using car batteries for home power that are recharged for a fee by an entrepreneur with access to the grid); how clean water can be had with electricity for simple low cost purification equipment; how much disease and early death is related to lack of basic power and clean water infrastructure, etc.
     The meeting then separated into smaller workshops of the three main HTC Challenges that were identified to focus the project teams, namely Reliable Electricity, Data Connectivity of Rural District Health Offices, and Individual ID Tied to Health Records. These workshop sessions attempted to follow a business model of trying to identify solutions to the most likely “points of pain” of the potential “customers” for the technology-based services that were being proposed. This in itself was a fire-hose learning process. Groups then reassembled after these exercises to discuss their conclusions.
     I represented NPSS as a member of the Reliable Electricity team so the following are my personal impressions, interests and opinions not necessarily shared by all members of the committee.
     When asked to develop innovative technology to help very poor people and communities, most people automatically think of a household situation in isolation which leads to family-unit sized solutions. Ideas for power generation in a presumed remote agrarian area are the predictable ones involving small units for solar, wind and water power generation along with chargers for batteries or water pumps for irrigation. All these technologies are in reality relatively expensive on a per-kWh basis, and they are feasible only for lighting, and running small appliances like TV’s, charging cell phones, water pumps etc. Small solar or wind units cannot support heavy appliances like cook-stoves or washers. In developing countries NGO’s reported that the most sought-after resources were lighting, refrigeration and a TV. One experienced hand noted that the very common solution of power from car batteries that get recharged for a small daily fee actually costs about $3.50 per kWh, compared with the 10–20 cents that we pay on the grid. To me this argues for larger capacity community solutions as mandatory for progress toward true growth of industry, infrastructure and sustainability.
     In other words, we need more consideration of community solutions to provide much higher levels of more affordable power to support not only homes but industries that could create employment for the community, enable the building of infrastructure, pay for the infrastructure and return a profit for the community to build up its self-sustainability. Solar and wind power are both very interesting if they have a grid to absorb their power during the times they are able to generate it, so the grid can reduce consumption of stored fossil, nuclear or water (hydroelectric) fuels on demand whenever the sun is shining and the winds are blowing or the tides are flowing and ebbing.
     Subsequent to the meeting I further investigated a half dozen or more new development initiatives for small nuclear plants of a few MW up to 120 MW (thermal) and learned that these are projected to deliver for about 20 cents per kWh, with caveats that much depends on the efficiency of conversion from thermal, and that distribution adds “about $1M per mile.” Still these units are very interesting because they are small enough to be transported by truck to a remote area and they advertise fuel lifetimes in a sealed self-regulating unit from 5 to as much as 30 years before refueling. Assuming materials handling and safety concerns can be solved (which the new Department of Energy Secretary Stephen Chu seems to think can be overcome) these units could become a boon to developing countries (as well as to the suppliers), especially when combined in a hybrid system with various types of renewable generation.
     The true spirit of the MDG’s however should always consider the developing country as the potential provider of the technology to at least its own use if not beyond, which means licensing and security issues must be solved on a grand scale. We should not thinking of just households and small communities here, but a market of 1.5-2B people; and not just of a few scattered power modules but tens or hundreds of thousands that can be organized and scaled to serve arbitrarily larger areas. Interestingly some technology solutions such as plasma water purifiers based on a for-profit model are already shown to be affordable for people earning $1–2 per day U.S. equivalent, i.e. for a person earning that amount living in the US. In other words even the very poor can afford to pay small amounts for a reasonable amount of household energy (e.g. 0.5–1 kW peak power) providing the cost is similar to what we currently pay, which requires at least a community-sized generator and grid. Generating smaller amounts of home energy at much higher per unit cost is purely an emergency stopgap, very wasteful in fact, not a solution to sustainable development.
     Three examples of very relevant and hopeful initiatives I have encountered in this new journey are as follows:

1. Hyperion is one of the micro-nuclear power unit offerings that spun off from Los Alamos lab, first brought to my attention by Peter Clout. President of Vista Systems and Past President of the IEEE-NPSS who used to work at the lab and lives in the city of Los Alamos. This is one of a number of units that are looking strongly to markets in the developing world. This is a city-sized unit and one would ideally want to employ a cluster of them for a small city grid. Such units could be initially purchased by the UN MDG program funds and a model built whereby local private and publicly owned industry would thrive toward self sustainability. We are leaving out a myriad of details of what kinds of industry will work in which parts of the developing world, but we know that affordable energy is absolutely foundational to economic development. Each 27MWe power unit costs about U.S.$25M which doubles when the electrical turbines are added, and adds some more when the $1M per mile distribution is added. The initial capital cost must come from the developed nations under the MDG plan but subsequent units should be replaced when fuel runs out and maintained by profits from operations.
2. Driptech in Palo Alto California is a small startup company at the opposite end of the spectrum. Designed by a Mechanical Engineer under a Stanford Business School program called Design for Extreme Affordability, it is marketing an irrigation drip system of the simplest possible design that can be delivered anywhere in the world for a starting price of about $30. Its market theme is that in water-scare areas huge quantities of water are wasted during the wet season by flood irrigation when in fact that water can be stored and metered out to the roots of the plants over a much longer growing period. Field tests are being conducted in Ethiopia, India and China. I have contacted the Driptech President who is currently in China to discuss how the IEEE HTC program could partner with the energy requirements for pumping and storage systems and a meeting in late August is promised.
3. Denver University Master of Development Practice Program in Denver CO is a degree program being launched in 2010 to train interdisciplinary leaders; all with links to partner institutions, to help conceive, plan, launch and manage MDG programs in cooperation with the vast range of global community resources needed to execute such a massive effort. Moreover the innovative program partners initially with university campuses and NGO’s in nine other countries. To quote from a note from our young colleague who will head up this program, “All the training programs will be online, open-source, global in nature and perspectives, and cross-sector (natural sciences, health science, social sciences, and management/policy-making).”

     The HTC has a Spigit website for communications among members, http://ieee.spigit.com; however as we all know from experience, although a website can be great for collecting opinions and ideas, it cannot avoid the hard work of organizing data, creating consensus among a very complex sociology of people and developing action plans. Also a reasonable amount of “face-time” is needed to make real progress in team building and inculcating shared knowledge and skills. The HTC is planning another workshop in October and likely another in the early spring. Meanwhile, we Challenged Ones are invited to pour forth ideas and sift them into a useful and applicable format for future planning. Unfortunately we realized at the meeting that we know far too little about the larger picture, as to what technology is already in play, how much of it exists, where we in IEEE can focus new efforts for both short and long-range benefits, etc. Apart from the mere availability of good technology, it is a very complex system engineering, technology and social management problem to bring projects to fruition that will have a major impact in the economic and human growth in under-developed countries. We are taking the first baby steps, but fortunately there are many who are already “walking the talk” from whom we can learn.
     In summary, HTC is off to an encouraging start but has a huge building job ahead if it is to graduate from pilot status and become a major force. Although the initial turnout of about 125 people, about half from the 400,000 member IEEE, was modest, the quality of experience of personnel on NGO, academic and IEEE sides was very impressive. If IEEE can quickly learn where it can best contribute, articulate to its members where they can best engage, and focus its efforts, it can definitely have a major impact on the entire program. IEEE has many innovators, but it also represents core technologies and technology applications of vital interest to developing countries. The ultimate MDG goal is to make those countries not just practitioners but owners of a fair share of the world’s technologies; so they too can become innovators who can drive economies to profitability and give their citizens good jobs, health care and living standards so they can earn a place in the practically limitless wealth of peaceful global enterprise.
     Interestingly, the IEEE HTC seems somewhat derelict in mentioning the underlying ties to the UN MDG program. Several IEEE people I talked to at the meeting knew nothing about MDG’s, while all of the NGO’s seemed instantly aware of it and felt they were already a part of it. To anyone scratching their head over the MDG’s I recommend Jeffrey Sachs’ book The End of Poverty (2005) and Common Wealth, Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), which describes the genesis of the MDG economic model developed by Sachs and colleagues when he was a distinguished Professor of Economics at Harvard University. His theories were put into practice in the emergence of several countries into independence after the breakup of the Eastern Europe dominance by the USSR and the transformation stories are dramatic and remarkable. After convincing the UN to adopt the program as a worldwide effort Sachs has now taken a position as head of the new Earth Institute at Columbia University, newly established specifically as a leadership and technology development organization for the MDG’s. It is a remarkable and most hopeful enterprise, perhaps the major hopeful sign in a world that seems destined to fall into division and warfare at the slightest provocation, always at the cost of those already least able to bear it. Sachs’ final word is, “We can fix this. It is not a matter of resources; the developed world has the resources, and we can afford this. It is a matter of the will.”
     Ray Larsen, IEEE NPSS liaison to the IEEE Humanitarian Technology Challenge, can be reached at the SLAC National Accelerator Center, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo {ark, CA 94025; Phone: +1 650 926-4907; Fax: +1 650 926-5124; E-mail: Larsen@slac.stanford.edu.