Low-Cost Technology

Low-Cost Technology is design principle for developlement of solutions or product, that replaces costly

• components, part, modules ot
• ingrediences

From High Cost to Low Cost Technology - Improve Accessibility

by cheaper replacements.

A low-cost solutions requires in general a risk assessment, to clear about the consequence for:

• humans,
• society or communities,
• environment,
• ...

Probability and Impact

Assume, there are 3 different technologies available (see diagram) that reduce the probability of getting affected by a certain event will be reduced by a different extend. Furthermore it is assumed that high costs imply high impact on risk mitigation (which may not be applicable in all cases). We consider Risk Mitgation in the context Low-Cost technology and determine Risk by

• the probability of an event, being harmfulfor someone how uses a specific (high cost or low-cost) technology
• the impact of an event for people that may access a certain technology.

$RiskMitigation=Probability\times Impact\qquad (\ast )$

Applied on the diagram above and the following probabilities $p_{k}$ and impacts $I_{k}$ the calculated risk mitigation examples are:

Risk Mitigation	Probability	Impact
$R_{1}=70$	$p_{1}=0.7$	$I_{1}=100$
$R_{2}=500$	$p_{2}=0.5$	$I_{2}=1,000$
$R_{3}=30,000$	$p_{3}=0.003$	$I_{3}=10,000,000$

This basic demo risk analysis shows that the poorest probability $p_{3}=0.003$ of the low-cost approach shows the highest Risk Mitigation $R_{3}=30,000$ due to the fact that $I_{3}=10,000,000$ can access and use the low cost technology. for risk mitiagtion. $p_{k}=1.0$ means that 100% of all affected people are protected by the high- or low-cost technology. How can you identify the probabilities and/or the impact by determining a rough number of people derive that will be using the specific technology. Furthermore the Risk management tries to define consequences of action taken in spite of uncertainty.

Risk Literacy is the ability to perceive risk and take appropriate actions for risk mitigation

Examples

• (Health and Food) In food production a more healthy ingredients is replaces by sugar or palm oil. The customer does not taste the difference between a more healthy ingredients and sugar and palm oil ingredients. The risk assessment looks on impacts on communitiy and health (e.g. higher risk for diabetes, ...).
• (Low-Cost Precision Farming) Use smartphones and mobile devices in an agrotechnical context of manual work (e.g. developing countries to reduce the application of agrochemical by keeping the same havest yield. Risk assessment look on the impacts of the application of argrochemicals to farmworkers, enviroment and economic productivity of such an low-cost approach in comparision to existing approaches of precision agriculture in agro companies with high standards of application of technology.
• (Solar Water Desinfection SODIS) Explore the concept of Solar Water Desinfection SODIS and explain if the concept has the features of Low-Cost Technology. Identify high-cost technology that serve the same objective as SODIS.
• (Leave no one behind) Low-Cost Technology can be used to maximize the access to technology by reducing the costs to apply the technology! Explain how Low-Cost technology can be apply in the approach of United Nations not to leave anyone behind.

See also

• Low-Cost Precision Farming
• Risk Management
• Wikipedia:SODIS - SOlar Water DISinfection

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