AntiPoverty Technology Research Cooperative Management of Community Technology

Anti-Poverty Technology: Research: Cooperative Management of Community Technology Lecture 40. 1 https: //hecourse. engineering. osu. edu

Cooperative Management of Community Technology, Relevant Subjects: • Example: The Water of Ayolé • Management of common-pool natural resources (e. g. , forest or lake) • “The common good” (Catholic social justice) People manage? Technology manages? A sociotechnological, socioecotechnological dynamical system 2

Community technology examples: • Water pump • Some energy source (e. g. , biodigester) • Sanitation service (e. g. , toilets) • Cell phone charging station (multiple outlets) Any technology that is shared 3

Community technology management: 1. Operation: Services or goods provided properly (e. g. , in adequate quantity and quality), and equitably among users. Selfoperation vs. assisted 2. Maintenance: Especially under heavy use and aging, break downs. Requires repairs or replacement, costs money 4

Example: • 5 people • 3 technology “resources” 5

Technology resources, j, j=1, . . . , M Users, i, i=1, . . . , N Amount of good/service from j by i, rij(k) Simultaneous use? Continuous/discrete? Sequencing of use, amounts per resource? Prices, pij(k), user pays pij(k)rij(k) 6

Collect money to pay for operation and maintenance: • Paid attendant? Paid repairperson? • What is the “mean time between failures” (MTBF) for a technology? Dictates collection amount • May collect more from one technology resource to pay for management of others 7

Management of Community Technology by People: • Attendants: Paid ($ or use), time range? Lock-down possible? Secure technology against abuse/theft? • Prices set by community (committee? ), use MTBFs? • Store money in bank of some sort • Ensure fair use, report technology failures • Boring, but useful jobs? 8

Problems: 1. Reliability: Will people always be there? 2. Corruption? Take $? Give free use? 3. Pricing sophistication too high? Dynamic based on repairs, use patterns, MTBF 4. Result in management failures ⇒ service down-times? 9

Automated/Semi-Automated Management of Community Technology: • Electromechanical $ collection devices at each j • Display price, gather money • Data tracking: Payments, use levels/patterns, monitoring from a distance (to study effectiveness) • A network? • Automation costs, up-front/on-going 10 Study of automation could be useful (pricing)

Semi-Automated: People+Technology • People attend, collect money, get paid • Prices set by the computer (to cope with complex pricing issues) • If person not there (e. g. at night), go to full -automated • Could cope with inequality, via pricing strategies (e. g. , with community input) 11

Feedback Control for Community Technology Management: Example • M=1 technology resource, N=3 people • Notation: ri(k), pi(k) • ri(k) are constants of 5, 7, and 8 with uniformly distributed noise added on from [-2, 2] • cm(k), maintenance costs at k • m(k), stored maintenance money 12

Past amount, minus expenditures, plus total gathered (modified) Amount paid to attendant 13

Desired stored maintenance money, md(k) Set as ramp/constant Let cm(200)=50 Pricing signal Nonlinear proportional feedback control Tries to adjust prices to make m(k) the same as md(k) (copes with random failures) 14

Allocate Pricing Choice of gi • Equality, gi=1/N • Inequality: Community picks the gi 15

Equality gi=1/3, i=1, 2, 3 16

Inequality g 1=0. 5, g 2=0. 3, g 3=0. 2 17

Research Directions: • Model validation—what needs to be validated? Variables, parameters, dynamics, … • Technology development: Case-specific. Learn community/context, propose solution (including social part), participatory development at each step. 18