Technology is growing rapidly more so than ever over the last few decades. As technology becomes more advanced, it has become cheaper and more accessible for consumers, allowing people to solve various problems that are not possible otherwise. In the past few years, prices have dropped in most of tech sector, including computer hardware. Products that were previously not widely available now can be obtained in a relatively low cost. This provides us opportunities to solve more problems, improve services, enable better decision-making, as well as reshape our environment to a greener, more efficient, and safer one.
Drone, more formally known as unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), has been marking its importance in civil society for a few years now. The term itself dated back to 1920s and originally used strictly for military purposes, but recent technology innovations make drones possible for civilian market. As a result, drones have been used for numerous applications such as disaster relief, aerial surveillance, and filmmaking. Even right now, drone technology is constantly evolving, bringing more advanced drones with affordable prices.
Indonesia is a country that can fully make use of drone’s abilities. At approximately 1, 9 million square kilometers, it is the 14th largest nation in terms of land area and ranked 7th with sea and land area combined. Indonesia is also a country with the third largest area of rainforests that spread over 17, 000 islands, habitats of many endangered and endemic species. With such a vast land of area, distance often becomes a challenge to fully provide services and coverage to protect and conserve wildlife. Drone can be a solution to solve this particular problem. There are two cases where drone can be used to its full potential, namely illegal deforestation prevention and wildlife conservation.
According to a study, Indonesia has the highest land clearance in the world along with Brazil, with 80% of its deforestation being illegal. Rainforest is a very important existence for the planet, its responsibility including absorbing carbon dioxide, produce oxygen, and help stabilize climate. It is also house to 515 species of mammals, 135 of them being endangered or threatened, which nearly a third of them is also native mammals. The destruction of critical habitat due to the expansion of illegal plantations drove both the rainforests and wildlife to immediate danger. Drone can be used as a mean of surveillance to improve the enforcement of forest laws. It can help forest rangers patrol and detect if something is wrong almost immediately from the skies.
Wildlife will also benefit from the technology. Last month, an elephant called Bunta was found dead in a protected conservation area with its ivory missing. Last week, 14 corpses and bones of orangutans are found not too far from Tanjung Puting National Park, traces of violence and gunshot wounds found on the bodies. There are hundreds of stories like these, all of them are equally horrifying. Drone will be able to provide officers the technical assistance needed to prevent similar situations in the future. Along by the support of other ICT fields such as big data, internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, the possibility of what drone can do is practically endless.
That is why when I heard about Seeds for the Future Program, I couldn’t help but feel excited. It is run by Huawei, one of the leading companies in the ICT industry that also conducts many research and projects on various technology innovations, including drone. Joining the program will enable me to learn how ICT are being used and operated in various sectors of life. It is also an opportunity to learn about ICT from a wider standpoint and its potential applications.
As Huawei has strong vision for sustainability, I believe that it will give me the appropriate knowledge and understanding of the current situation in the real world and the challenges that may arise along the way. It is also aligned, not only with my personal interest, but also with the field of study I am currently studying, which is Informatics. I would love to be a part of invaluable opportunity of learning about ICT directly from the experts at Huawei through the Seeds for the Future Program 2018.
