The DIL pipeline of demonstration projects will create real and measurable impact and serve to demonstrate and refine the Development Engineering methodology and DIL’s strategies for supporting scaling. The projects integrate new technologies in areas such as energy, water, and health, with novel understandings of markets, social behavior, and organization. Learn more about current DIL projects:
Rural Electric Power Project (REPP)
Rural, off-grid electricity solutions and evaluation.
Cellscope
Smartphone-based microscopy for point-of-care disease diagnosis.
WE CARE Solar
Portable solar power for medical LED lighting and charging of cell phones and medical equipment.
ElectroChemical Arsenic Remediation (ECAR)
Arsenic removal from contaminated groundwater.
Collective Assessment & Feedback Engine (CAFE)
Online platform to facilitate public discourse and political engagement.
Affordable Recycled Modular Roofs
Affordable modular roofing tiles made from recycled materials for slum housing.
High-Resolution Development Indicators
Combining traditional face-to-face and phone-based surveys with “Big Data” from telecommunications networks to estimate a range of development indicators.
Information and Intermittent Water
Evaluate the effects of a new text-message based notification system on households’ abilities to cope with intermittent water supply and willingness to pay for utility services.
Automated Smear-Positive Tuberculosis Diagnosis
Developing software to complement existing mobile device hardware in order to facilitate quality-assured diagnosis of smear-positive tuberculosis.
Improving Job-Search Efficiency
Evaluates and improves Job Shikari, an innovative job market information system that matches recent graduates from technical and vocational training institutes with employers
Pilot and Planning Projects
Sustainable Arsenic-Bearing Sludge Management
Develop methods of sustainable arsenic-bearing sludge utilization for arsenic-affected countries.
Field-portable computational microscopy
Design, build, and optimize the Computational CellScope.
Treating Brackish Drinking Water
Develop a novel technology to affordable make brackish water potable for rural developing communities.
Energy Efficiency and Rural Electrification
Study smart meters to understand household electric power usage.
E-warehousing for Smallholder Farmers
Hand-held devices to record the amount of stored grain to improve agricultural productivity.
Cookstove Measurement Technology Project
Mobile accounting software to improve overall uptake and usage of fuel-saving cookstoves
Sensor Reactivity Study
Randomized, controlled trial to study the influence of instrumented monitoring on household-level water filters.
Ocular CellScope
Mobile phone-based ophthalmoscope.
Does Scarcity Improve Adoption?
Comparing approaches to introducing lower-emission cookstoves to rural communities.
Community-based air pollution Informatics
Low-cost, easily accessible community resources to enable air pollution informatics.
Reducing Corruption Through Crowdsourcing
Evaluating the impact of a crowdsourcing application that aggregates information about corruption and public service delivery in India.
Digital Mapping for Transparency
A new dataset that combines high-resolution satellite map with location-tagged data that will inform public infrastructure audits.
Incentivized Mobile-based Timed Surveys
Mobile-phone based surveys that will inform the poor on economic decisions, and companies and governments to guide policy and business decisions.
TriSan
Going Beyond the Bowl to Achieve Gender Equity in Sanitation.
Scaling up Peer Education
The project’s mobile phone-based social media service, Khedut Saathi, allows farmers to easily share educational ideas and experiences with fellow farmers.
Cool Joule
Cool Joule examines the potential benefit of flexible energy loads to provide a grid-scale balancing resource and societal co-benefits by using a ‘FlexBox’, and other strategies.
Mobile Phone-based Pulse Oximeter
An ultra-low-cost device, capable of simultaneously measuring blood oxygenation, heart rate, and heart rate variability, that relies on the processing, connectivity, and power resources of mobile phones.
Counterfeit Seed
Conducting genetic testing of maize seed samples in western Kenya, allowing researchers to provide the first quantitative assessment of the extent of counterfeiting in Kenya.
Participatory Road Infrastructure Monitoring
A new technology that uses sensors embedded in a mobile phone to automatically detect potholes and to provide a visual mapping of potholes.
Incentivizing the safe disposal of human feces in urban areas
Transforming waste to fuel at large scale and as one of the solutions to the urban sanitation crisis in Kenya.
Matatu Monitoring in Kenya
Monitoring technology in Kenya’s informal transportation sector to allow for employee monitoring, easier contracting, and increased productivity and safety.
Matching Job Seekers
Design a randomized control trial to test impact of two specific interventions: a promotional campaign to advertise individual job posts, and screening via skills assessments administered to job applicants.
Low-Cost Air Pollution Monitoring
develop and deploy a network of low-cost air quality sensing devices mounted on boda-bodas (motorcycle taxis) to produce a detailed and near real-time map of air pollution. This will provide insights into the sources and scale of air pollution in Kampala, Uganda.
Haqdarshak: Accessing Public Services
Seeks understand impacts of technology platform called Haqdarshak, which identifies eligible families and helps them through the process of receiving entitlements.
Lotto-Linked Savings Accounts
Design and test a mobile money based lotto-linked savings account that leverages Haiti’s pervasive lottery culture to improve savings and broader welfare outcomes.
StreamDev: Low-Cost Hydroinformatic Sensing
Collaboration between UC Merced, Kathmandu University, and the International Centre for Mountain Development (ICIMOD), with goal of integrating hydrologic knowledge and socioeconomic information into a water management decision support system.