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Brainstorm Topics for Advisory Council Meeting

Technology Transfer, Open Source and Responsible Review

Strategy for building capacity

Online design tool

  • Will require some of Monroe's time to publish this online

    FReTA (Flocculation Residual Turbidity Analyzer) patenting or open source

    Should any of the technologies that we develop be patented? We have developed a new instrument for measuring flocculation effectiveness that could be used by water treatment plants to evaluate their flocculators. The instrument will cost several thousand dollars and so will not be used at AguaClara facilities, but there is already interest in using it at larger municipal facilities. Shall we patent it with the hope of a revenue stream or should we release it with the hope of a larger impact?

How do we provide adequate design review

Funding strategy for Cornell and for implementation

Program Growth

There is interest from a number of Latin American countries in having a pilot project to demonstrate the technology.
Monroe is putting more time into the project than can be sustained. Delegation to students has helped tremendously this semester, but as the project grows the time required for coordination with partners, generating knowledge, documenting the technology, and reviewing designs continues to grow as well.

Program assistant

Expansion to other countries

  • At what point does it make sense to start the project in another country?
  • How automated should the design process be and how automated can it be? Should we be planning for Honduran engineers to be able to download a complete set of plans for the internet, or should we just be giving them drawings of the tanks and pipes and let them do the final drawings? On the designs we're working on we have found that the slope and shape of the contruction site affect the desired design a lot. Perhaps we should leave more work and flexibility to the in-country engineers.

How do we provide sufficient review of our designs to ensure that they are ready to be built prior to delivering them to partner organizations?

How do we make sure that as we grow that AguaClara continues to be a "win, win, win, win" for students, Cornell University, partners in the Global South, and communities who drink the water?

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