Our Story

Borderless Participation in Auroville - By Chandresh Patel

Aurinoco Systems, an Auroville unit has set up an Educational and Research Network (ERN). This network is connected to National Knowledge Network (NKN) of India with a fast data link. NKN is a state-of-the-art, multi-gigabit, pan-India network provisioned by Government of India to enable scientists, researchers and students from different backgrounds and diverse geographies to work closely for advancing human development in critical and emerging areas.

While NKN connectivity and ERN are a major step forward for Auroville, a large number of other units, homes, projects and activities would remain unconnected as they are ‘not eligible’ toavail NKN services. Unlike conventional educational institutions, the educational and research activities in Auroville are not confined to designated buildings for research, but permeate all communities and zones of Auroville in myriad ways. Keeping this in mind, Aurinoco has set up Auroville Community Network (ACN) and to bridge it with ERN to form a unified intranet andprovide services for “Borderless Participation in Auroville via Tele-Collaboration”. The potentialbenefits include

• Accelerating ongoing researches and catalysing new collaborative researches

• Providing complementary education through country wide class room service of NKN

• Reduction in out-flow (for broadband and telephony) and creation of new jobs

• Enabling remote participation and reducing the carbon foot-print

• Promotion of industrial growth with e-access to a wider market

• Improving governance through RAS portal for discussions and decision making

• e-governance, e-surveillance and remote participation in meetings

• Broadcast of multi-cultural programs and remote participation in events and seminars

• Complimentary and alternate tele-education and tele-medicine to the bioregion and beyond

• Effective collaboration and coordination with AVI centres

• Researches and collaboration in the role of ICT in all walks to a human society, specifically relatable to Smart Cities initiative launched across India.

  Future roadmap includes data centers supporting "active digital memory", community wide database, intranet monitoring of services, tele-education, tele-medicine, town hall meetings, international participation in the research and building of International Zone of Auroville. Aurinoco Systems has initiated several monitoring of community infrastructure services such electrical, solar, sewage and security at mobility entry points. If will be expanded to water, air pollution to allow for researches into smart-city data analytics.

  In order to continue and integrate new technologies, new methodologies that open up in the areas of Integrated Communication and IT from across the globe, Aurinoco Systems will begin aresearch platform “ICT Centre of Excellence” to gather the best practices in the field of ICT. The broad lay of the areas that may be explored is vast and depending on the resources that come to the Aurinoco team, various works will be taken up. The overview diagram with key-hole areas have been captured in the attached diagram.

  Thus it may be seen that the Aurinoco activities of the Auroville Foundation are an integral part of the Auroville social research.