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Urban Programs, USAID

SureLifts - the Mobile Community LiftClub

Project URL: 
http://rideactive.param.mobi/
Short Project Overview: 

SureLifts is a mobile RideShare service that will enable a Commuter to be partnered with a Driver of a vehicle , sharing a transport lift , by utilizing the powerful matching service that will be offered to members of the Club who need an online service using the features of their basic Mobile device. The SureLifts service involves Commuters as members and should not be mistaken for a Car-Sharing service that has become popular with affluent citizens.

Detailed Project Overview: 

Overview

SureLifts is a mobile Rideshare service, where a Commuter may place a request for a lift, stating the days, time and the locations. The service is created to benefit all 2.2 billion mobile device users globally, by using the unpresedented computing power of footsoldiers that are willing to share partnering information in real time, for a win-win solution of all comunities.   If a Driver can reach you, you can be a partner sharing a transport Lift, negotiated by mobile phone!  More than 200 million people, who are not in a position to travel with their own vehicle, can improve their quality of life, by making use of a mobile Liftclub portal service.  

How does it work?

As validated registered members of the club, Commuters and Drivers will be matched, and after being served with quality information by SureLifts on their mobile phone, negotiate a Lift with an acceptable partner.  Members would be matched with available partners as soon as qualified offers become available, which would be submitted as mobile messages in order to take swift action.  A mobile SureLift portal was designed to provide comprehensive travel arrangements, helpful community and member account information in a very efficient style.  After conclusion of the lift arrangement, the members are afforded the opportunity to rate their partners and once more negotiate a new lift deal.

Benefits:

SureLifts allows the public community to participate in private partnerships enabling themselves with a mobile online service, when and where they need to go effectively, whilst improving their lifestyle. At the same time the members, as civilians, participate in improving the community service and assist in protecting the environment and improve social relationships.
SureLifts records the carbon emission value that the partners achieve by sharing transport.

The differentiator of the SureLifts service to all other available Rideshare services, are the fact they all present offerings only allow the matching part of online website portal requests. No futher records or performance information is available to Users to evaluate and manage their arrangement deal.
SureLifts is the only mobile solution that will allow the participants to monitor the progress of the transaction, receive notices of the presence of their partner and be ABLE to reschedule the arrangement whilst in progress. 

Open source coding will be used in order to make it feasible to provide the service cost-effectively  in as many communities globally as possible.

Why operate as a mobile platform?

The service must be offered on a mobile platform; in order that any person can, online, negotiate a lift in an effective and safe manner. Use will be made of location based services to determine the shortest and most convenient options to both partners. The two parties will as members have sufficient information, to privately conclude their arrangements, track progress and keep record of the carbon emission offset value that they have effected over a period.

Security:

The details of registered members will be kept private and secure by SureLifts and will only be used to validate the acceptability of the member according to the rules set by the Board of Trustees of the particular Lift Club.  As a premium service, members can be tracked by authorized friends and be served with location-based information relative to the route travelled.

This engineered service is unique in that it will be offered free to all participants on entry level mobile phones and that it protects the shared information of all participants, with  a strict code of ethics.

More information

Blog: http://surelifts.wordpress.com

SlideShow: http://gcmcknight.webng.com/Surelift/Surelift/Surelift/SureLift/

Video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkhbg1nsvUo

Mobile screen clip:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEM9Kf7cdw4

What else have you done in this area?: 

Werner was the chief trainer of MeWe OpenSource's LPI training course and is now focussing on programming mobile device applications.  
After meeting Pieter Henning, the innovator of the SureLifts idea, it was decided to port the SureLifts application on cutting edge mobile technology. Since researching a mobile strategic plan for Standard Bank in 2000, Pieter has been working on the Mobile LiftClub idea, realizing that the unbanked citizens also need a service where they can participate to arrange a transport lift with partners to their preferred place of work or leisure.

Pieter is designing various mobile device applications that will port to the latest Symbian, J2ME  and Andriod platforms.

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Project RSS Feed: 
http://www.rssletter.com/GetChannel/ChannelId=100755
Organization supporting your Project, if any: 
MeWe Arts & Culture
Supporting Organization URL: 
http://mewe.org.uk
City: 
London
State/Region: 
England
Country: 
United Kingdom
Does your Project have financial support?: 
No
Is the impact area of your Project global?: 
Yes
Type of expertise needed: 
Management Expertise
Description: 

In order to customize the SureLifts service in non-English speaking countries, assistance would be needed to set up the service on other continents according to the language and culture of the local users.

Type of expertise needed: 
Policy/Program Expertise
Description: 

SureLifts must be managed as a well-constituted club, run according to the directives of a Board of Trustees.

The correct expertise will be sought for consultation that will ensure that the principles of; good security of the service, offering anonymity of members, fair ratings of members and quality of service is maintained.   

Although the integrity of club members will be ensured with comprehensive details required for membership, SureLifts only provides the Matching and verification service.  

Members are well aware of their particular LiftClub rules and will make their own responsible decisions on setting up partnerships.  A legal practitioner is required to set up proposed guidelines for the benefit of LiftClub.

 Partnerships in rendering the application on Microsoft Mobile and Andriod platforms will broaden the footprint of the service.

Type of expertise needed: 
Marketing/Media Expertise
Description: 

In order to populate the membership speedily, dynamic marketing in countries where the communities are not so well versed with the mobile use of mobile devices should be done effectively.   The service will grow organically very quickly once the public community experience that many lift opportunities are registered, that can be considered as options.

Sustainability (financial) Model: 

The cost to members of the LiftClub would be minimal and is expected not to succeed $1 per Lift arrangement.  Since it is such a small expense relative to the estimated average lift distance per event of 10 miles ( 16 Kilometres) that will save the commuter at least $40 a month, the sustainablity of the SureLifts service is ensured.  The Club trustees will set up guidelines on a suggested reward to the driver, but the arrangement will be agreed to by the two partners and wll not share the any of the reward with SureLifts, that purely manages the matching service.  
In the event that the driver helps more that one commuter, more savings in terms of transport costs, a bigger carbon emission offset value and less traffic congestion on the road will be effected.   Estimated Financial seed funds of $1.4 million would be required to set up and test the pilot service to an acceptable standard.

Identified Obstacles: 

Although SureLifts only provide a matching service, some countries may wish to protect the utilization of public transport.  The laws of a specific country regarding driver licensing will be honored by the membership requirements of the LiftClub; Taxi operators would be encouraged to also participate in offering services and the lifts could act as a feeder service to official bus stops as well.

Where mobile signal reception is lacking, members may use the Internet through computers or Information Kiosks to gain access to the SureLift portal for a similar range of services.

Project Milestones: 

• Developed Mobile Banking Strategic Plan for a major Bank In South Africa: 2000
• Developed a Location Based product plan for a Mobile Operator in South Africa: 1999
• Delivers a paper at the Dept of Transport, Innovation Symposium in South Africa on SureLifts:   29 November 2007
• Developed the SurePower user WAP site: July 2008
• Lead an Open-session discussion at the MobileActive08 summit on Providing Mobile services to  Communities: 15 October 2008
• Launch http://surelifts.wordpress.com: 2 December 2008
• Finalize Beta for service application: October 2009
• Pilot Test: January 2010
• Market the SureLifts product globally: May 2010

Additional Project Idea Representative: 
Ann-Marie Olufuwa
Additional Project Idea Representative: 
Werner Van Staden
Submitted by v3nz3n on March 2, 2009 - 12:59pm

SurePower - Utilising Mobile communications to optimise Utility distribution

Project URL: 
http://www.iwe.param.mobi/
Short Project Overview: 

A Mobile messaging system, which delivers a "call to action" advice by the power utility, to notify the partnering public to prepare for power disruptions or natural disasters in their particular suburb, so as to minimize the effect on their lifestyle.

Detailed Project Overview: 

Why SurePower(SP)? 

Mobile phones are commonly referred to as "Africa's Computer". The power of this service, is the sharing of real-time information to mobile users, of electricity power disruptions forecasts, that will enable the user to participate effectively in ratiolizing the use of alternative energy sources, avoid huge consequential losses,that will not be possible otherwise   More than 70% of economically active inhabitants in South Africa use mobile phones, and apply SMS communications as an alternative to voice.  SurePower provide an effective mobile communication service for the Electrical Power Distributors.  An advice relating to their neighborhood of an impending power load shedding is provided JUST IN TIME by quality messaging to participating consumers.  Power Distributors are now enabled by the SurePower(SP) service to ascertain in which geographical area the affected electricity user is.

SP conducts an effective survey by ringfencing all the participating mobile users who would be affected by a specific circuit break.  This conceptualized PowerCell would be the definition of the group of interested mobile users, that need to be advised during a specific timeslot in a day.  SurePower also makes possible the complementary benefit, where a Power Distributor can confer with partnering users on how to cooperate in using the limited power resources.

What are the SurePower features: 

• Send power interruptions predictions to mobile users relating only to their suburb via cost-effective SMS alerts.

• Access a mobile WAP internet website for members of the participating group.

• The Utility company benefits from the PowerCell survey for planning purposes

• The facility provides the capacity of conducting various PR interactions with Mobile user involvement.

Who is behind SurePower:

The team is lead by Pieter Henning; who is a Telecom Engineer with 30 years experience, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

When are the Power Distributor and the mobile Users involved in the service?
The Power Distributor would advertise in the local media that interested users must SMS their Postal code when they experience the next triggered power outage.  The SMS information received in the 30 minute window period would be sufficient for SP to calculate the Powercell

What else have you done in this area?: 

• Workshops have been held with management of the main Power Distributing Utilities in South Africa, after the onset of major black-out events, that are expected to re-occur over the next 6 years.

Good Public Relations and communications are required in order to minimize the consequential damage by implementing alternative resources.

• Developing a specification for a Workflow management company to partner in producing a Load Shedding forecast tool for Power Distributors in order that a prediction of a probable power outage event may be shared with residents and commuters.

• Presented the need for a mobile messaging service by the Electricity Utility to mobile users at a Public Hearing held by NERSA, the National Electricity Regulator of South Africa.

Is there a video that helps describe your Project? If so, enter the embed code here: 
Project RSS Feed: 
http://www.rssletter.com/GetChannel/ChannelId=100742
Additional Project RSS Feed: 
http://surepowers.wordpress.com/
Organization supporting your Project, if any: 
Foundation for Building Sustainable Communities
Supporting Organization URL: 
http://www.fbsc.org
City: 
Oshawa
State/Region: 
Toronto
Country: 
Canada
Does your Project have financial support?: 
Yes
Is the impact area of your Project global?: 
Yes
Type of expertise needed: 
Marketing/Media Expertise
Description: 

The SurePower communications tool will be made available to Utility Distribution organizations that are willing to share expected utilily supply problems; however expertise on improving a Public Relations program to their new age users will be appreciated.  Ample communications capacity exists on the message advices to the members to coach them on better utilization of renewable energy sources.  Assistance on Web 2.0 style Social Networking features to be shared by the participating members in a club relationship would also be welcomed.

Type of expertise needed: 
Technical Expertise
Description: 

A survey will be done on behalf of the Power Distribution utility, on determining the location of participating mobile users; by requesting participants to SMS the name of the street and suburb in SMS text form, where the information relating to the Load Shedding will apply.  However, financial or technical expertise, to determine the mobile location by Celltower triangulation or GPS transponder determination will greatly improve the accuracy of the PowerCell.

Type of expertise needed: 
Management Expertise
Description: 

The service can easily be customized to be applied in any country with basic mobile coverage. However, in order to customize the service with the specific procedures relative to local Utility distribution regulations and specific local indigenous language requirements in non-English speaking countries, will require some additional management expertise and funding.  The service can be adapted to announce any other Utility distribution problems in a specific area for participating members.

Sustainability (financial) Model: 

The Working Capital to establish a system for a Utility with 800 000 clients, is estimated at US$ 1.8 million and the researched annual Operating cost per (Electricity) user member to participate in the Messaging system is US$ 3.00. Owing to the miniscule expense of avoiding consequential losses (less than 0.1 percent of the average household electricity account), sustainability in any well governed country is ensured.
SurePower plan to offer a specialist Public Relations consultation service to ensure that even the smallest depots of the Utility company will be competent to service the required energy savings plan to users.

Identified Obstacles: 

Not being able to raise sufficient funding to fast-track the development, would retard the development, testing and marketing of the optimum SurePower service.  The lack of dependable associated resources to take the service to market, will create an opportunity for a similar though inferior alternative services by communications companies.   Governmental monopolies with subjective regulators, may not endorse the belief that the public is not entitled to fair advices.

Project Milestones: 
  • Developed a Unified Messaging product plan for the biggest Mobile Operator in South Africa:  1999
  • Developed Mobile Banking Strategic Plan for a major Bank In SA: 2000
  • Blackout disaster hits South Africa, triggering SurePower:  January 25, 2008
  • Announcing the SurePower solution at the Public Hearing of the National Electricity Regulator of South Africa. - May 29, 2008
  • Developes the SurePower user WAP site: August 2008
  • Promotional Media and Blog finalized with Partner: November 21, 2008
  • Launch  http://surepowers.wordpress.com: 
  • Finalize Beta for service application:  March 2009
  • Pilot Test with Utility company:  June 2009
  • Market the SurePower product globally: October 2009
Additional Project Idea Representative: 
Glenn McKnight
Additional Project Idea Representative: 
Joan Kerr
Additional Project Idea Representative NetSquared User Name: 
Joankerr
Submitted by dwyka on March 2, 2009 - 3:54am

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