Transcript Meriem Ait Ouyahia Statistician, African Centre for Statistics, ECA

Meriem Ait Ouyahia
Statistician,
African Centre for Statistics, ECA
Fabio Grita
System Support Officer,
Statistics Division, FAO
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
FAO and UNECA are implementing a project to assist the governments of
Cameroon, The Gambia and Zimbabwe to establish a surveillance network and
monitoring system to collect and analyze food market prices.
The system is designed to exploit the potentials of mobile devices to monitor
key markets on regular basis.
OBJECTIVE
The overall goal is to set up a system that would strengthen the
capacity of national agencies in collecting and disseminating key
data on food prices.
This data is expected to be instrumental for monitoring price
volatility and analyze trends having potential negative impacts on
food security and human welfare
ACTIONS
• Present the system to relevant national agencies
• Discuss potential uses and benefits of the system, taking into
account existing data collection and analysis systems
• Roll-out the developed system to the interested countries
• Train national staff in collecting data using the mobile devices
BENEFITS
• Reduce paper-based surveys
• Reduce time and cost of data input; store data directly in databases
• Reduce the probability of error from data input processes and
consequently reduce the need for data cleaning and management
• Potentially increase data security and confidentiality
• Enable real-time monitoring of key indicators
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MOBILE APP (1)
• Multiple devices can be used to conduct a survey
• No Internet connection is required while conducting surveys:
results are temporarily stored locally and uploaded when the
connection is available
• Use of geocoding and GPS to identify locations (e.g. closest
market) when the survey is conducted.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MOBILE APP (2)
• Built with Open Source technology
• Ability of adding/removing markets, commodities, measurement units, etc.
• Geocoding and mapping functionalities to locate cities, markets and
vendors
• Embedded metadata information (complying with SDMX specifications) to
facilitate data exchange
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WEBSITE
• Built using open-source technology (FENIX platform)
• Real-time acquisition and display of data transmitted by the app
• On-the-fly calculations of averages, sums, measurement units conversions
• Grouping of data using markets, commodities, etc.
• Extensible to add more functionalities, perform calculations using
algorithms and include new pages
TECHNOLOGY USED
Set the work
environment
Add a new
market
Enter market name and
use GPS or the map to
store its location
TECHNOLOGY USED
Select your market and
vendor
Enter price and quantity for the varieties you need
and press “Next” to send data to the database or
“Save” to temporary save your data in the
smartphone
TECHNOLOGY USED
Data sent via smartphone is stored in a database
managed by FENIX, which renders data in real time as
maps, tables and charts (accessible at the following
address: http://fenixapps.fao.org/crowdprices/)
FENIX calculates the daily average of the prices on-the-fly
whenever more than one value per commodity/variety is
entered for the same day
COMMITMENTS
• Maintain the software application based on the FENIX platform (FAO-ECA)
• Ensure that adequate training to national staff is delivered (FAO-ECA)
• Provide a limited number of mobile devices for the pilot phase (FAO-ECA)
• Allocate adequate staff time to carry out the activities (Gov. of Gambia)
• Make provision for increasing the number of mobile devices and for the
running costs such as vehicles, fuel, sim cards, etc. (Gov. of Gambia)
SUSTAINABILITY
• The same software platform is used for several applications at FAO, ECA
and other partners. All of them are investing in this technology, and
therefore maintenance and development costs are shared
• All components of the price are open-source and therefore most of them
are maintained by the open source community and can be used and
upgraded at no cost
• A roadmap should be define to progressively release responsibility to the
Government of Gambia, not only for collection and maintenance of data
but also for future development of the mobile app and web application