Internet access
Dr. Barath Raghavan of UC Berkeley discussed the issues of rural network access, sustainable agriculture, and the mitigation of air pollution. Dr. Raghavan began his lecture by explaining that over 50% of the global population are disconnected from the internet. Various rural regions are connected to the internet through dial up, DSL, cable, satellite, and cellular networks. Dr. Raghavan hypothesizes that wireless internet service providers (Wireless ISPs or WISPs) are the best way to increase the connection of these rural areas to the internet.
However, there are challenges to managing a Wireless ISP in rural areas such as spectrum scarcity (due to limited tower sites for customers) and difficulty financing network growth to meet customer demand (i.e., the cost of adding a customer to a service is high). Software defined networking (SDN) has been noted as capable of addressing these challenges to WISPs by easing management complexity and implementing network policies which are simpler. Dr. Raghavan also emphasized that rural WISPs want to scale but fail due to limitations by people, finances, and geography. Effectively this means the main challenge to increase wireless ISPs in rural areas is to enable more people to operate successful rural WISPs rather than merely increasing the operations of existing ones.
Agroecology
Further, Dr. Raghavan discussed his work surrounding agroecology and global food security. Agroecology uses ecological theory to study, design, manage, and evaluate agricultural systems that are productive but also resource conserving. Dr. Raghavan detailed the ways in which industrial agriculture is not sustainable due to its dependence on non-renewable resources and its negative effects on the ecosystem. Dr. Raghavan’s way of addressing this issue is through computational agroecology. Computational agroecology aims to scale agroecology by transforming many types of land (both rural and urban) into new food producing ecosystems, taking into consideration specific conditions of local regions and long-term ecological health and food security in these areas. Dr. Raghavan also gave examples of other approaches to solving industrial agriculture such as organic agriculture, companion planting, and bioengineering which have fallen short in various ways. Thus, by using computational tools to assist in agroecological designing, implementing and maintaining food producing units, and sharing knowledge, a more sustainable agricultural system can be put into place.
Air pollution
Finally, Dr. Raghavan shared his future work centered on mitigating air pollution. His approach involves aggregating data on sensitive locations such as hospitals and schools. This is especially helpful in low-income communities which lack data surrounding pollution mitigation. Dr. Raghavan explained the importance of identifying which location would have the most impact on the problem as a method of engaging the affected community. Dr. Raghavan’s work has proven to have an impact on the available methodology in addressing fundamental societal issues surrounding concerns of internet access, food security, and air pollution on a global scale.
