South Africa is blessed with many innovators. We have a legacy of developing innovative products and solutions to problems, epitomising the saying ‘’n boer maak ‘n plan’. The country is also cursed with several problems, chief among them energy restrictions, crime, unemployment and corruption.
There must surely be innovative electronic solutions that can:
1. Provide employment.
2. Provide solutions to our energy shortages.
3. Reduce the levels of crime and corruption.
A product I would like to see is a low-cost induction cooker that could replace the notorious paraffin cooking stove. If it could be powered by wind or wind-up or even hand generator that would be another energy saver.
According to nationmaster.com South Africa is rated number one for gun homicides, with 126 gun homicides per hundred thousand people per year. Are there not opportunities here for more effective electronic gun control measures?
A national register could be created which would keep track of ballistic characteristics like fingerprints. A device could be developed to scan and record the ‘bullet print’ of firearms when they are sold. This would not stop murder but could at least be used to track firearms and their use.
There is also scope for more effective, low-cost detection units for firearms for use by banks and stores to prevent firearms entering the premises. The installation of GPS/GSM trackers could be implemented in registered firearms to track their use and theft. Perhaps long-range RFID tags could be used, which could be detected by scanners at the entrance of buildings, banks or schools. There must also surely be opportunities for electronic locking systems for firearms to prevent use by persons other than the owner.
South Africa ranks number 10 in the world in terms of the size of our prison population: 402 prisoners per hundred thousand residents. Prisons are overcrowded and act as breeding grounds for more crime. If more awaiting trial or petty crime prisoners were released with tracking devices this would reduce the prison population.
Community-based tracking offices would provide employment, increase local awareness and get local populations involved in crime prevention. Tracking of offenders and parolees has been shown to reduce recidivism. A locally developed tracking device and system would provide employment and business opportunities. The cost of the tracking unit might be paid by the parolee or person out on bail.
Illegal driver’s licences, illegal social grant recipients and identity theft are problems that could be addressed by a better national identification system. Corruption could be reduced by having a system that is less susceptible to illegal creation of identity documents and duplication.
India has launched a system using iris and fingerprint identification that could be copied locally. Issuing smartcard identification containing fingerprint and iris codes would provide a more secure system for all the population. Developing and rolling out such a system would provide employment and business opportunities for innovators.
Similarly, if the iris data for known or wanted criminals was recorded and used in a scanning system available to banks and businesses this could prevent crimes from being committed. Iris scanning can be performed without physical contact with the person scanned. A person passing through an entrance control unit can be scanned and identified in a matter of seconds.
Banks and businesses could also use iris recognition for verifying customers more securely when performing transactions. Patrolling police officers could have handheld iris scanning units for traffic stops to verify driver’s licences and identify known offenders with outstanding fines or warrants. An iris scanning app for iPads or cellphones might provide a mobile solution.
Let us put South African innovation to work to solve these challenges in 2012.
For more information contact Henry Hugo, Centurion Micro Electronics, +27 (0)21 851 4904, [email protected], www.cme.co.za
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