Date: Tuesday, December 3, 12pm – 1pm
Location: Blum Hall B100
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Topic: An Evaluation of Solar Microgrids in India: the Rural Electric Power Project (REPP)
Guest: Debalina Chakravarty, Development Impact Lab’s Visiting Scholar, Jadavpur University
Topic: Time-Activity Monitoring System: Uncovering Personal Exposures to Household Air Pollution and their Relation to Pollution Sources
Guests: Nicholas Lam, Ajay Pillarisetti, and Manuel Barron, Behavioral Sensing Research Grantees, UC Berkeley
In developing countries, quantitative social science research relies heavily on infrequent surveys that capture the self-reported behavior of individuals and their families. These data can be biased and unreliable and are extremely costly to collect. Repeated surveying also has been shown to influence households’ behavior and reporting, which limits the utility of high-frequency data.
The Institute of International Studies (IIS) Behavioral Sensing workgroup is charged with designing a more reliable data collection platform for development economics. The platform will combine rugged, wireless sensor networks for long term, non-intrusive monitoring of behavior (i.e. cookstove usage) with mobile-phone based tools for collecting and transmitting data. It will enable public health, behavioral, and social scientists to collect data that study participants would ordinarily share through self-reports, but with greater accuracy, reliability and frequency than is currently feasible.
The seminar series features the work of researchers involved in this initiative, which combine expertise in social science and engineering in order to generate comprehensive, demand-driven solutions to development challenges. Organized in partnership with CEGA and the Institute of International Studies, the series supports the Development Impact Lab‘s (DIL) efforts to support the scaling up of pro-poor innovations with global impact.
Lunch will be served.