Expanding adoption of drinking water treatment systems in developing countries: a case study from Tamil Nadu, India

Household-level water treatment and safe storage systems (HWTS) are simple, local, user-friendly, and low cost options to improve drinking water quality at the point of use. However, despite conclusive evidence of the health and economic benefits of HWTS, and promotion efforts in over 50 countries in the past 20 years, implementation outcomes have been slow, reaching only 5-10 million regular users. This study attempts to understand the barriers and drivers affecting HWTS implementation. Using a case study example of a biosand filter program in southern India, system dynamics modelling is shown to be a useful tool to map the inter-relationships of different critical factors and to understand the dissemination dynamics. It is found that the co-existence of expanding quickly and achieving financial sustainability appears to be difficult to achieve under the current program structure.

Adoption of simple technologies for poverty alleviation

Several technologies have been disseminated to the rural populace of which few were adoptable while others were above their reaches. The adoption-rejection behaviour of the people of Monai community formed the basis for this study. Twenty women fish processors were interviewed using standard questionnaire. The study discovered that the women fish processors used the new introduced Better Life Programme Banda in rotation for even coverage. The use of new Banda has a positive effect on the quantity of fish processed and income. Additional two basins were processed on weekly basis with an income of N1,000.00 over the previous processing technology. No women processor however had the new Banda on individual basis for cost. Hence rural people adopt a technology that is cheap and simple but conforming to their traditional practices and values. Therefore any innovation intended for the rural populace should take cognizance of their socio-economic and cultural factors

The adoption of ecosystem-based adaptation in the international climate agenda

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A Model For Residential Adoption of Photovoltaic Systems

The rapid rise in the residential photo voltaic (PV) adoptions in the past half decade has created a need in the electricity industry for a widely-accessible model that estimates PV adoption based on a combination of different business and policy decisions. This work analyzes historical adoption patterns and finds fiscal savings to be the single most important factor in PV adoption, with significantly greater predictive power compared to all other socioeconomic factors including income and education. We can create an application available on Google App Engine (GAE) based on our findings that allows all stakeholders including policymakers, power system researchers and regulators to study the complex and coupled relationship between PV adoption, utility economics and grid sustainability. The application allows users to experiment with different customer demographics, tier structures and subsidies, hence allowing them to tailor the application to the geographic region they are studying. This study then demonstrates the different type of analyses possible with the application by studying the relative impact of different policies regarding tier structures, fixed charges and PV prices on PV adoption.

Design and implementation of a cloud computing adoption decision tool: Generating a cloud road

Migrating to cloud computing is one of the current enterprise challenges. This technology provides a new paradigm based on "on-demand payment" for information and communication technologies. In this sense, the small and medium enterprise is supposed to be the most interested, since initial investments are avoided and the technology allows gradual implementation. However, even if the characteristics and capacities have been widely discussed, entry into the cloud is still lacking in terms of practical, real frameworks. This paper aims at filling this gap, presenting a real tool already implemented and tested, which can be used as a cloud computing adoption decision tool. This tool uses diagnosis based on specific questions to gather the required information and subsequently provide the user with valuable information to deploy the business within the cloud, specifically in the form of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. This information allows the decision makers to generate their particular Cloud Road. A pilot study has been carried out with enterprises at a local level with a two-fold objective: To ascertain the degree of knowledge on cloud computing and to identify the most interesting business areas and their related tools for this technology. As expected, the results show high interest and low knowledge on this subject and the tool presented aims to readdress this mismatch, insofar as possible. Copyright: © 2015 Bildosola et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Socioeconomic factors that influence the adoption of small-scale rural fish farming at household level in Zimbabwe

The study compares the socioeconomic profile of fish and nonfish farming households in three different agroecological regions in Zimbabwe. Some of the direct socioeconomic factors that influence the adoption of small-scale fish farming in the areas are also identified.