Humanitarian Technology Challenge
Student Design Program
Regional Competition Guidelines
About the Competition
The Humanitarian Technology Challenge, a partnership between IEEE, and the UN Foundation, seeks to find technological solutions to some of today's greatest humanitarian challenges by fostering collaboration between humanitarian service providers, IEEE members and other technologists around the world.
Using information gathered from focus groups of health and emergency response organizations and NGOs, we have identified over 30 humanitarian needs that could potentially be addressed through technology and selected three for initial focus. The objective of the IEEE-HTC Regional Student Design Project is to provide a working prototype, scale model or detailed engineering design specifications for a project that satisfies one of the three HTC challenges below:
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Reliable Electricity
Bring electric power to resource-constrained environments through inexpensive, reliable electricity generation on a small scale for lighting, refrigeration, communications and economic development.
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Data Connectivity of Rural District Health Offices
Facilitate the exchange of information and data between remote health clinics and providers with central health facilities, hospitals and ministries in order to track disease outbreaks and get appropriate treatments and medicines to those who need them most.
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Individual ID Tied to Health Records
Develop better recordkeeping methods for individuals' health records in the developing world so as to link them to treatment regimens and track the impact - even in the event of natural or man-made disasters or refugee situations.
Who is eligible?
Projects can be developed by individuals or student teams, which will be responsible for all of R&D and the creation of the working model or prototype. Teams must be led by an IEEE student member in good standing at the time of final project submission, but may include students who are not IEEE members. Faculty members or representatives from industry can serve as mentors, champions or otherwise provide guidance as needed.
What is required, and when?
Each individual's or student team's solution must directly correlate to one of the three HTC defined technology challenges, and participants must: define the scope of their project; conduct all analysis and design; develop and present a project plan; identify the technology and technical solution being proposed; provide applicable R&D information, costs, etc.; and be prepared to discuss and defend all aspects of the design.
The competition will begin in October 2009, and conclude in May 2010. The schedule will be as follows:
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November 30, 2009
Submit letter of intent to htc@ieee.org describing the project to be undertaken, the applicable HTC Challenge and the names of the team members.
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December 15, 2009
Logins assigned to the HTC Collaboration tool website, Spigit.
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February 5, 2010
Progress report with project in terms of milestones accomplished and deliverables completed.
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May 28, 2010
Final report, consisting of a physical model or prototype, documentation, written project summary and 30-minute verbal presentation
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June-July, 2010
Review of projects by panels of judges; presentations by finalists
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August, 2010
Announcement of winners
All entries must be submitted through Spigit, the IEEE Humanitarian Technology Challenge collaboration tool web site: http://ieee.spigit.com.
Awards and Recognition
The IEEE-HTC Steering Committee will provide prize and award support for each IEEE Region, with specific prizes and team recognition categories to be announced in February. Individuals identified as mentors, champions or other supporters will receive honorary recognition, but will not be eligible for a monetary reward. Prizewinners will be recognized at an IEEE sponsored event, to be determined.
Judging and Evaluation Criteria
Panels of HTC designated judges at the Region level will review submissions, and recommend the regional award recipients. The decision of the judges is final.
Project requirements are purposely extensive and are comparable to expectations of senior or community service projects offered by many university engineering programs. Several criteria will be considered, with applicability, feasibility and portability as primary considerations; winning projects will need to have many of the following characteristics:
- Thorough technical description
- Clearly specified standards and interfaces
- Plans which address how solutions are engineered, operated, administered and maintained
- Plans for economic implementation
- Identified stakeholders and funding sources
- Potential prototypes and field trials; and
- Identified related work already underway by others.
Evaluation will be weighted as shown below:
Additional information, application and resources
Ready to get started? Additional information on the project is available at www.ieeehtc.org. You'll also find additional tools, information and resources that will help you plan your project, build an effective team, foster team creativity and better manage your workflow. A complete description of the Detailed Regional Competition Guidelines can be found by clicking here.