Fraunhofer AICOS’ application for solid waste management, ORERA, is launched

20.03.2020

 

ORERA is the application developed by Fraunhofer AICOS’ research team through which citizens are able to inform, by sending a photo taken from their smartphones, about occurrences of accumulation of solid waste in certain places. The application was developed (and designed) for individuals with little digital literacy, thus interviews with the users were led in order to guarantee a solution tailored to their needs.

 

Designed for Android and available at Play Store – ORERA (SV4D), the application allows the citizens to be aware of other occurrences and to report events not yet registered by adding a photo and a description of the situation. Municipalities also have access to a web platform with all the registered occurrences which they are able to manage and mark as concluded as soon as such occurrences are resolved.

The launching of the ORERA application took place in February, in Mocuba (Zambézia, Mozambique) and, on the occasion, 60 smartphones were offered to different target groups including students from secondary schools, students of agronomic and forestry engineering from UniZambeze and the local agrarian institute, teachers, and community leaders.

Geraldo Sotomane, President of the Municipal Council of Mocuba, considered the launch of the ORERA application to be a “complementary action leading to the full realization of the purposes of that project” which is “driving the development of our municipal area, through digital inclusion, helping to keep the city clean and thus creating a healthy and desirable environment in this municipality”.

“We are all going to successfully get the most out of using the application that our partners (INCM, ARCTEL-CPLP and Associação Fraunhofer Portugal) propose to us to keep Mocuba clean. It's a challenge!”, underlined Antónia Manharage, Provincial Director of Transport and Communications. Furthermore, she declared that the Government reiterates its support for the massification of the Internet and consolidation of digital inclusion and urged the Communications Regulatory Authority-INCM and its partners to move forward with further actions of this kind in the province and in the country.

Also present at the launching, the INCM's General-Director, Massingue Apala, stressed the real purposes of the event: “We want to promote the ORERA application. We want everyone to know how to use the ORERA, that is, how to maintain our city, through this application”. Massingue Apala emphasized that just by the name of the application (in local language), it was easy to read the true intentions: "to help keep the city clean and beautiful, with the direct help of the mayors, the citizens".

The ORERA application has been developed by Fraunhofer AICOS as part of the Sustainable Villages for Development (SV4D) project which started in Mozambique (Mocuba) on the May 27th, 2018. Along with such partners as ARCTEL, FSAU, ARECOM (previously known as INCM), local administrations and stakeholders, Fraunhofer AICOS is leading the SV4D which aims to take free internet and digital services to under-served communities. Mozambique was the pioneer when these organizations partnered and accepted the challenge to implement the first pilot in Mocuba, which was later extended to Alto Molócuè, in the Zambézia province. In the city of Mocuba, with the help of FhP-AICOS' project, free Internet access is already a reality at the Faculty of Agricultural and Forestry Engineering of the University of Zambeze, at the local secondary school, at the District Hospital, at the Agrarian Institute, as well as in district and municipal buildings. The FSAU, an autonomous heritage managed by the INCM, coordinates the implementation of this important digital inclusion project in Mozambique.

The general goal of the SV4D is to provide access to ICT to citizens located in rural areas of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries - CPLP (Angola, Cape Verde, Brazil, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and East Timor), and so far the project has been deployed in Mozambique and in Cape Verde.