UK-India Research Collaboration Deepens - Researching how to make rural living more sustainable is a challenge being tackled together by the UK and Indian Governments.
Bridging the Urban and Rural Divide (BURD) projects address the research challenges of making living rurally a sustainable option – a topic that was agreed to be of importance to both countries. The BURD panel held in London was chaired by Dr Rajagopala Chidambaram, Principal Science Advisor to the Government of India. Over £7m from Research Councils UK, with resources from the Department of Science and Technology (DST) in India, will fund successful projects. Of those recommended was 'Scaling the Rural Enterprise', led by Nottingham University, with staff from the the Mixed Reality Lab playing a key part in the research project.
Nottingham researchers help bridge the urban and rural divide in the UK and India
Scaling the Rural Enterprise
Community and Business Enterprise — investigating rural community attitudes to the need and potential of proposed energy technologies and developing new business strategies for sustaining energy generation at a community level.
In a £1.26 million project, researchers from the University of Nottingham and the Centre for Technology and Development in New Delhi will lead an international team including, the Future Interaction Technology lab at Swansea University, IIT Bombay, NISTADS in New Delhi, alongside industrial partners including Microsoft Research India, and IBM Research Laboratory in India.
Although a world apart, organic food producers in Ceredigion in west Wales and non-edible oil producers in Uttarakhand in the foothills of the Himalayas both increasingly struggle to get a decent price for their goods. One reason for this is that these communities both lack the scale to maximise their position in an increasingly global market place.
The sustainability of small communities is a huge issue in rural areas. Rural enterprises in both the UK and India struggle without the communication and distribution infrastructures found in urban-industrial areas.
Dr Catherine Mulligan said: “We will develop new technologies to allow communities to shape the next generation of rural enterprises. This will allow rural enterprises to achieve the economies of scale and retain control of the supply chain dynamics that currently work against them.
“Mobile technologies have already allowed rural communities across the world greater access to information and expertise, leading to the creation of new local enterprises. The next challenge is helping these communities exploit these technologies to coordinate their activities in order to scale up the levels of production and compete on a level playing field with urban enterprises.”
Nottingham
Named MRL team:
- Prof Tom Rodden Co-Investigator
- Dr Boriana Koleva Co-Investigator
- Dr Alan Chamberlain Co-Investigator
Named Horizon Team:
- Dr Catherine Mulligan Prinipal Iinvestigator
Swansea:
Named FiT Lab Team:
- Prof Matt Jones Co-Investigator, Principal Investigator Swansea
For more information contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it : Alan.Chamberlain(@)nottingham.ac.uk· (remove brackets) Links to story below:
Partners of the project include; Future Interaction Technologies Lab at Swansea University, the Mixed Reality Lab at The University of Nottingham, Ordnance Survey and Organic Centre Wales in the UK and Microsoft Research, IBM Research, The Centre for Technology & Development, The National Institute of Science, Technology & Development Studies, The Industrial Design Centre (IIT Bombay), The Department of Computer Science and Automation (IIS Bangalore), Swecha, Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti (BGVS) and Ghanshyam Smriti Shiksha Evam Kalyan Sansthan (GSSKS) in India.
· ·This work was supported by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) [grant number -·EP/J000604/1]