Crowdsourcing via SMS service by united-forests

Hi Natashau, thanks for your questions.I have experience in developing decision support systems as well as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) development in connection with Web-GIS or remote sensing. As I understand this topic of adapting ecological calendars, it can be viewed as a location based service/knowledge which is in some constant change (climate change). Therefore the communication with farmers has to be in two ways - gathering information of key indicators and getting informations via a decision support system that adapts to changing climate. My observations in the himalayan mountains or the taklamakan desert as well as rural Gambia show that there is always a good enough network to send and receive some SMS. Also it seems that everybody has a mobile now a days. Farmers who use this system have a clear advantage, they can make informed decisions, and may have a better yield. To encourage farmers some payment per SMS can be provided - like one free SMS per Information SMS. Or some gambling component has to be integrated, some betting on a key indicator - Like: "who knows most exactly the flowering time of key indicator X in valley Y can be part of our lottery". There are many ways to encourage farmers, one has to understand their culture etc. to develop individual ideas.

Hi Nicolash, thanks for starting this proposal! I think this kind of data collection is a key step for adapting the calendars, and the use of SMS is a great idea. I find that people all over the world are learning to use the Latin alphabet in their own language when they send texts, even when they use a different script. I have seen this in both Amharic and Armenian. I agree with Natasha that the incentives for submitting data need to be considered and I like your ideas. There is a great citizen science project called the USA National Phenology Network (https://www.usanpn.org/) that could serve as a model for data collection, although the audience and therefore incentives are quite different. As far as adapting the calendars once this kind of data has been collected, there are still a lot of questions to consider. For example: 1) How should farmers decide when to start counting at the end of the chillas (the periods of non-counting)? What is the most reliable seasonal cue (or set of seasonal cues)? 2) Should the counting of days on body parts be the same from valley to valley, or should counting itself be adapted to local conditions (as it was in the past)? 3) How do we help farmers decide when to plant in relation to the counting (if the optimal timing is going to vary between farmers in different valleys and at different elevations/aspects/etc in the same valley)? By decision support system, are you suggesting that the data from the farmers is then analyzed by some central authority? I think that one of the coolest things about the calendars in the past is that they combined the expertise of a local authority (the hisobdon, keeper of time) with farmers' individual knowledge of their own fields and pastures (each farmer took the calendar initiated by the hisobdon and applied it in her/his own way). Do you think we could support a similar system now? Thanks again for your proposal and I hope to continue this discussion!

Here's a build on your idea: What if you combined and linked this kind of crowdsourcing with another activity that has additional benefits? Examples that come to mind are the platforms Ushahidi http://www.ushahidi.com/ -and- Frontline SMS http://medic.frontlinesms.com/. The idea would be to piggyback climate services with medical and/or disaster preparedness services somehow.

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