AN Internet of Things (IoT) device developed by the local firm DataSoft will now solve the water supply crisis faced by Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in what can be viewed as yet another giant stride for Bangladesh’s ground-breaking tech firm.
Mecca does not have a central water system and the inhabitants get by with portable water tanks. More often than not, the households cannot tell when the tanks are nearing depletion; they only find out when the supply has ended, creating great inconvenience for them. Now, thanks to the $450-device developed by DataSoft, the households will get an alert when the water level in the portable tanks hits 10 percent, indicating a change or refill is in order. More orders will be placed depending on the efficacy of the IoT devices. Shipment will start from July 31 with a batch of 100 units.
DataSoft is also developing an artificial intelligence system for Tokyo’s 10,000 smart apartments, which will help to solve the accommodation problems during the 2020 Olympics. The company is also developing IoT solutions for the Democratic Republic of Congo for one of its bridges, which will give signal about the bridge’s condition and weight of the vehicles.
IoT is a computing concept that describes the idea of everyday physical objects being connected to the internet and being able to identify themselves to other devices. The devices communicate with one another and act on the information they get from each other, without any human intervention.
That Bangladesh has many things to transfer to the developed world has been known for a while. Microcredit has often been labelled as the first transfer of technology from the third world to the first. The father of the modern skyscraper– Fazlur Rahman Khan, was a Bangladeshi. So was one of the founders of Youtube, Jawad Karim.
So it is not too difficult to envisage that our engineers can come up with a tool which will be both efficient and economical. If we can develop software and hardware for first world countries like Japan then we can claim to be truly world class. Such IT firms need better quality infrastructure availability like uninterrupted electricity supply and high speed internet connections as well as cheaper IT products — all of which the government can provide, if it wants to. Instead of forever relying on cheap labour for the RMG industry we should think of competing with the developed world on areas which it supposedly has a competitive advantage and beating them. This should be our export policy.
