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1. DEVELOPMENT AND PILOT STUDY OF AN INTEGRATED SENSOR SYSTEM TO MEASURE FUEL CONSUMPTION AND COOKSTOVE USE

   Ventrella, Jennifer ; MacCarty, Nordica ( January 2018 , Proceedings of the ... ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences)

   Accurate, accessible methods for monitoring and evaluation of improved cookstoves are necessary to optimize designs, quantify impacts, and ensure programmatic success. Despite recent advances in cookstove monitoring technologies, there are no existing devices that autonomously measure fuel use in a household over time and this important metric continues to rely on in-person visits to conduct measurements by hand. To address this need, researchers at Oregon State University and Waltech Systems have developed the Fuel, Usage, and Emissions Logger (FUEL), an integrated sensor platform that quantifies fuel consumption and cookstove use by monitoring the mass of the household’s fuel supply with a load cell and the cookstove body temperature with a thermocouple. Following a proof-of-concept study of five prototypes in Honduras, a pilot study of one hundred prototypes was conducted in the Apac District of northern Uganda for one month. The results were used to evaluate user engagement with the system, verify technical performance, and develop algorithms to quantify fuel consumption and stove usage over time. Due to external hardware malfunctions, 31% of the deployed FUEL sensors did not record data. However, results from the remaining 69% of sensors indicated that 82% of households used the sensor consistently for a cumulative 2188 days. Preliminary results report an average daily fuel consumption of 6.3 ± 1.9 kg across households. Detailed analysis algorithms are still under development. With higher quality external hardware, it is expected that FUEL will perform as anticipated, providing long-term, quantitative data on cookstove adoption, fuel consumption, and emissions. 

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2. IN-FIELD EVALUATION OF AN INTEGRATED SENSOR SYSTEM TO MEASURE FUEL CONSUMPTION AND COOKSTOVE USE IN RURAL HOUSEHOLDS

   Ventrella, Jennifer ; MacCarty, Nordica ( January 2018 , ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences)

   Accurate, accessible methods for monitoring and evaluation of improved cookstoves are necessary to optimize designs, quantify impacts, and ensure programmatic success. Despite recent advances in cookstove monitoring technologies, there are no existing devices that autonomously measure fuel use in a household over time and this important metric continues to rely on in-person visits to conduct measurements by hand. To address this need, researchers at Oregon State University and Waltech Systems have developed the Fuel, Usage, and Emissions Logger (FUEL), an integrated sensor platform that quantifies fuel consumption and cookstove use by monitoring the mass of the household’s fuel supply with a load cell and the cookstove body temperature with a thermocouple. Following a proof-of-concept study of five prototypes in Honduras, a pilot study of one hundred prototypes was conducted in the Apac District of northern Uganda for one month. The results were used to evaluate user engagement with the system, verify technical performance, and develop algorithms to quantify fuel consumption and stove usage over time. Due to external hardware malfunctions, 31% of the deployed FUEL sensors did not record data. However, results from the remaining 69% of sensors indicated that 82% of households used the sensor consistently for a cumulative 2188 days. Preliminary results report an average daily fuel consumption of 6.3 ± 1.9 kg across households. Detailed analysis algorithms are still under development. With higher quality external hardware, it is expected that FUEL will perform as anticipated, providing long-term, quantitative data on cookstove adoption, fuel consumption, and emissions. 

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3. A Mixed-Method Approach: Design of a Novel Sensor System to Measure Cookstove Usage and Fuel Consumption

   Ventrella, Jennifer ; MacCarty, Nordica ; Zhang, Shaozeng ( January 2018 , IEEE Global Humanitarian Technical Conference)

   Abstract— Stakeholders in the improved cookstove sector have called for better monitoring tools to quantify the adoption and technical performance of these devices. To meet this need, researchers at Oregon State University developed the Fuel, Usage and Emissions Logger (FUEL), an integrated logging load cell and temperature sensor that measures household fuel consumption and cookstove usage. This paper outlines the design process of the FUEL system using a mixed-method ethnographic approach that combines qualitative and quantitative data to inform each step in the design process. The ethnographic methods used for field studies in Guatemala, Honduras, and Uganda included participant observation, semi-structured interviews, surveys, and focal follow. Triangulation of these results were used to validate or invalidate design hypotheses. Findings highlight general challenges faced during the design process of humanitarian technologies, including product adaptability, symbolism of “everyday” objects, and pro-innovation bias. Overall, results contribute towards a framework of ethnographic design research for humanitarian technologies. 

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4. Survey based behavior and impact assessment A case study of improved cookstove adoption in rural Honduras

   Pakravan, Mohammad ; Laughlin, Katie ; MacCarty, Nordica ( January 2018 , IEEE Global Humanitarian Technical Conference)

   Nearly 40% of the world’s population relies on inefficient burning of biomass using traditional stoves and open fires for their household energy demands. Use of traditional methods contributes to global anthropogenic climate change, and has been attributed to at least 4 million premature deaths every year. In addition, increasing population in middle- and low- income countries pushes the demand for firewood to unsustainable harvest rates leading to deforestation. To address such challenges, many international organizations have worked to provide improved cookstoves for these communities. This study applies surveys incorporating research methods from social sciences focusing on the role of users to evaluate the impacts of these technologies in the field, as well as to understand what motivates consumers to change their traditional practices. By conducting surveys before and two months after dissemination of 390 improved cookstoves in Copan Ruinas, Honduras, this research evaluated the impact of the improved cookstoves for the users and their evaluations of the presented technology. Results suggest that approximately 85% of the households used the improved cookstove as their primary stove. The top three reasons for households to continue using the stove were reported as reductions in smoke emissions, firewood consumption, and time to cook food. For 80% of the households, the level of effort required to cook with the improved cookstove was reported as significantly less than traditional stove. Future work should include sensor-based monitoring and long-term follow up to verify findings and examine impact over time. 

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5. EVALUATING USER INTENTION FOR UPTAKE OF CLEAN TECHNOLOGIES USING THE THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR

   Pakravan, Mohammad ; MacCarty, Nordica A ( January 2018 , ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences)

   Understanding and integrating a user’s decision-making process into design and implementation strategies for clean energy technologies may lead to higher product adoption rates and ultimately increased impacts, particularly for those products that require a change in habit or behavior. To evaluate the key attributes that formulate a user’s decision-making behavior to adopt a new clean technology, this study presents the application of the Theory of Planned Behavior, a method to quantify the main psychological attributes that make up a user’s intention for health and environmental behaviors. This theory was applied to the study of biomass cookstoves. Surveys in two rural communities in Honduras and Uganda were conducted to evaluate households’ intentions regarding adoption of improved biomass cookstoves. Multiple ordered logistic regressions method presented the most statistically significant results for the collected data of the case studies. Baseline results showed users had a significant positive mindset to replace their traditional practices. In Honduras, users valued smoke reduction more than other attributes and in average the odds for a household with slightly higher attitude toward reducing smoke emissions were 2.1 times greater to use a clean technology than someone who did not value smoke reduction as much. In Uganda, less firewood consumption was the most important attribute and on average the odds for households were 1.9 times more to adopt a clean technology to save fuel than someone who did not value fuelwood saving as much. After two months of using a cookstove, in Honduras, households’ perception of the feasibility of replacing traditional stoves, or perceived behavioral control, slightly decreased suggesting that as users became more familiar with the clean technology they perceived less hindrances to change their traditional habits. Information such as this could be utilized for design of the technologies that require user behavior changes to be effective. 

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