The new International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) on Technical Survey (IMAS 08.20) have been released in March 2013. We are very pleased to read that they are addressing many issues also raised by the study  "Land Release in Action: In-field study of practices in use in six countries", in particular the need of differentiating between machines for clearance and machines for technical survey and the need of defining how to assess the performance of different assets for technical survey especially in terms of the extent to which the asset will preserve information associated with hazard items, the speed and cost with which the asset can undertake the technical survey function and the suitability of the asset in light of the surrounding environment, infrastructure and climate.

It's an incredible good news for the mine action community, hopefully paving the road to a larger use of LOCOSTRA!!

 

 

We are happy to share with you the thoughts of Prof. Pascal Zachary written in his paper "When Innovating, Go Slow" published on IEEE Spectrum on 14 Mar 2013. 

The Study Land Release in Action presenting the data collected in a three month trip around six countries is now online and can be downloaded here.

The Study has been carried out by Snail Aid in the context of TIRAMISU project with the double aim of providing the basis for the research on Non Technical Survey (NTS) and Technical Survey (TS) that will be carried out in TIRAMISU project and collect as much as possible detailed data on the actual use of land release practices around the world to highlight best practices and critical areas that might be worth investigating.

While waiting for the new headquarter to be finished we have temporarily changed the headquarter address.

 

The new one is:

Snail Aid - Technology for Development Impresa Sociale

Via Montallegro 5/3, 16145, Genova, Italy

 

 

I'm proud to say that I finally found the time to put some order in the liber 1 documentation. You can find it in the project page.

The aim of the liber 1 project is to create a versatile, compatible and cost effective data-acquisition for monitoring from different sensors in the development of other technologies (we tipically use it for temperature and pressure measurement for bio-diesel engines).

The hardware is based on the arduino platform and the code to be run on a spare PC is based on processing language and has been tested to run on both linux and windows operating systems.

The project is still under development, but both the code for arduino and for the pc are available at the project page.

Cheers

Gatto

Yesterday emanuela came back from Malanje where she could visit NPA operations. As always NPA has been very supportive and we have to thank Zlatko the PM in particular.

The visit was really interesting and it was definitely the best way to start the in-field survey on non technical and technical survey practices in several countries.

Snail Aid is carrying out the survey in the context of TIRAMISU project, funded by the European Union.

 

The next visit should be to MAG in Angola.

 

On Saturday 25th of February, the Municipality of Silvano d'Orba, the Province of Alessandria and the Regional association of craftsmen organized an event to present LOCOSTRA project to the public. Approximately 100 people came to know a bit more about the project. Gianni from PIERRE Trattori, Matteo from the University of Genoa and Emanuela from Snail Aid have been very happy to speak about the work done with the very important help of  Daniele Prato, journalist of La Stampa, as facilitator. The meeting concluded with the formal delivery of plaques from the authorities.

It has been a real pleasure to speak about the very intensive work done on LOCOSTRA machine to such a large and interested audience.

More pictures can be seen on the gallery

 

 

Another newspaper spoke about LOCOSTRA: it's l'Espresso and the paper can be read here

We are incredibly happy about the interest shown recently on LOCOSTRA machine and we are getting ready for tomorrow when LOCOSTRA will be presented officially at Silvano d'Orba at 15.00 at the SOMS theatre.

Everybody is welcome to participate!

We are very happy because the news about LOCOSTRA is spreading!!

Today there is a set of pictures with comments on the Italian newspaper Repubblica.

You can see it online here:

Have a nice day

 

We have just came to know that a famous Italian radio program called Caterpillar (radio2) is going to interview Gianni from PIERRE Trattori about LOCOSTRA project. Today at 18.40 approximately.

Here is the podcast