Questionaire for potential projects

Max Chen tosses out some ideas for what it takes to evaluate a new project - see his website:
www.oilycog.com/appro-tech-questions.doc
This document is intended to be used to evaluate the needs of present internal projects (e.g. Haiti, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, India), to see if there are AT problems that they need solved. To make this a "live" document that can be added to or modified by others it might be put on the FTP site established by Dave, and/or we can comment on it here on the blog, we can put it right in the blog (instead of linked), or some combination of all three. How do you want to use your blog? Interactive or as a place to shout out to the others?

Particularly for outside projects, where groups approach us for assistance, we need to decide what our interpretation of AT projects might be, and how we are going to use this definition to select potential projects which might be suitable for the Design Team to consider.

Max sez... great resource!

From Max Chen: for a really good link leading to many, many short book reviews on AT subjects (Grasses—Their Use in Building?):
http://www.villageearth.org/atnetwork/atsourcebook/index.htm
They call this a "guide to practical books on village and small community technology". 1150 publications from international and U.S. sources are reviewed, covering small water supply systems, renewable energy devices such as water mill and improved cook stoves, agricultural tools and implements, intensive gardening, conformal education, small business management, transportation, small industries and other topics. Extensive index. Price and ordering information are provided for each publication. At the very least this might prevent you from buying the wrong book, and it should remind you of the full scope of AT.

Excellent AT Stove Link

Every once in a while there is a great link out there - the Internet has tons of information but too much of it is useless. This is a great one just on appropriate technology for stoves:

http://journeytoforever.org/at_woodfire.html

It covers everything imaginable - efficiency, indoor pollution, different fuels, environmental costs, etc. And if you include the many links in it, it is a huge amount of information from a zillion sources. If we had more resources like this we would be rich - then when we encountered specific needs in the field (water purification, irrigation, microcredit, livestock, food security, etc.) we could see what has been done and then customize a solution with our engineering skills. For example, most of the stoves described have not been fully developed - the job is not done until they are reliable and you can manufacturer them efficiently and inexpensively in developing countries. And what might be "appropriate technology" in one country may not be in another.