Monitoring Food Prices Using Mobile Technologies through the FENIX Platform 15 December 2015Stefania Bacci, FAO HQ, Rome, ItalyCountrySTAT Statistician

Overall Goals Monitor food situation to support vulnerable communities in managing risks and mitigating negative effects of disasters Build national capacity to strengthen food price data collection systems Potentially the system can be used to monitor a large variety of environmental and socio-economic factors

Why mobile technologies? The most obvious objective is to overcome data management problems of traditional surveys carried out using paper-based collection methods. Mobile technologies will help FAO and FAO-partners reaching critical and/or remote areas, often in greatest need of assistance. The availability of such data will fill important gaps and provide key information for long and short-term decision making and planning FAO envisages two operating modalities: used by national agencies’ officers or other qualified personnel to run rapid surveillance surveys; used in crowdsourcing modalities to obtain large volumes of localized data

Characteristics of the FAO App Built with Open Source technology Includes configuration files for managing code-lists (e.g. markets, commodities, measurement units, etc.) Accurate positioning using GPS (for geo-referenced information). Geocoding and mapping functionalities to locate cities, markets and vendors Possibility to store data on the device locally, where there is no or limited connectivity Embedded metadata information complying with SDMX specifications

Characteristics of the Web Application Based on the FENIX IT platform, entirely open source Receives and displays data transmitted by the app in real-time Interactive selection of data using maps On-the-fly calculations of averages, sums, measurement units conversions Geocoding and mapping functionalities to filter data Extensible to add more functionalities, perform calculations using specific algorithms and include new pages

Set the work environment Add a new market Enter market name and use GPS or the map to store its location How it works

Enter price and quantity for the varieties you need and press “Next” to send data to the database or “Save” to temporary save your data in the smartphone Select your market and vendor How it works

Data sent via smartphone is stored in a database managed by FENIX, which renders data in real time as maps, tables and charts (accessible at the following address: FENIX calculates the daily average of the prices on- the-fly whenever more than one value per commodity/variety is entered for the same day How it works

Release of Output Data Data is made available as “public good”, possibly in real- time, downloadable from the website Data is associated to metadata and it is searchable through the FENIX catalogue (available in any FENIX application) Compatible with international metadata standards (e.g. SDMX, DDI, DCMI, ISO19115); possibility to expose data through SDMX registries (under development) Data can be accessed via APIs

Implementation status Activity co-financed by UNECA, AMIS, CountrySTAT UNECA pilot countries: Zimbabwe, Gambia and Cameroon o Gambia intends to implement it immediately at national level (no pilot phase) o Cameroon has included it in their first phase of the census 2016 AMIS Pilot country : Nigeria CountrySTAT Pilot countries : Tanzania and Cameroon