WeRobotics
For A Project To Inform Policy Through The Use Of Remotely Sensed Data
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Amount$600,000
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Program
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Date Awarded8/24/2017
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Term24 Months
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Type of SupportGeneral Support/Program
Overview
WeRobotics works with governments and communities in the Global South to use robotics solutions such as aerial and marine robots (drones) to enable high-quality data collection across multiple sectors. Drone technology puts the means to generate and interpret high-resolution, high-frequency data in the hands of governments, local communities, and organizations. This grant will support WeRobotics to strengthen the policy engagement capacity of its Tanzania Flying Labs; develop a community of practice around drone imagery for policy in Tanzania; and explore the feasibility of establishing a Flying Labs network in Senegal.
About the Grantee
Grantee Website
www.WeRobotics.org
Address
1209 Orange Street, Wilmington, DE, 19801, United States
Grants to this Grantee
for locally led inclusion of emerging technologies into evidence-informed policymaking
Through its Flying Labs Network, WeRobotics supports groups of local experts in communities both rural and urban to integrate emerging technologies such as drones, their data, AI, and robotics into a wide range of policy problems and processes at the local level — from the humanitarian sector to the developmental sector, and in areas including the environment and health. With its sharp focus on building the capacity of local networks, WeRobotics’ work extends the conversation beyond how to use emerging technologies to who should lead in their application — thereby forging new ways of working in a sector that is often very top-down, and excludes local expertise. Building on the previous grant and focused specifically on its African activities, this grant will continue fostering WeRobotics’ investments in its Flying Labs Network. The Network unlocks new ways of working and thinking across the continent, all the while providing new data, information, evidence, opportunities, and frameworks that support the objective evaluation of the fit and value of emerging technologies for evidence-informed policymaking.
for the Power Footprint project
WeRobotics and its global network of Flying Labs enable local experts in low- and middle-income countries to use drone imagery and artificial intelligence to provide high-quality data and analysis to solve humanitarian, development, environmental, and health problems locally. WeRobotics’ model is predicated on putting local organizations in the lead, and shifting the traditional top-down international development model on its head. This grant is for a special project of WeRobotics to work with a small consortium of donors, international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and organizations based in the Global South to figure out a way to actually measure an INGO’s “Power Footprint.” An INGO’s “Power Footprint” is the amount of authority, control, and influence that an organization is able to exert over local organizations as a result of that organization’s history and current activities. With such metrics, INGOs, donors, and local organizations would then be able to much more concretely align and understand what “power” means — with a way to see nuance on the issue across the wide array of different types of organizations, and (most importantly) identify ways to reduce an INGO’s “power footprint.” (Strategy: Evidence-Informed Policymaking)
