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Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is used to support developing countries in many different ways, such as poverty reduction, public services enhancement, and disaster management and recovery. Mobile4D is a software framework that applies the crowdsourcing paradigm to facilitate information exchange between people during disaster situations. It acts as a disaster reporting and alerting system as well as an information sharing platform. Mobile4D facilitates rapid communication between local citizens and administrative units. Moreover, it allows exchanging experience and knowledge between people to reduce poverty and increase living standards. The Mobile4D framework has been deployed in a pilot study in three provinces in the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). The study was limited to report particular types of disasters, however, it revealed further use cases and identified the required extension of Mobile4D to cover the entire country. This paper presents a report about Mobile4D: initiative, challenges, status, and further extensions.

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Agriculture in the Southeast Asia region has been changing from traditional subsistence farming to modern commercial farming practices at various rates and this has led to specialized commercialized farming with mechanization, intensive tillage, and increased agrochemical use. The use of high inputs and labor-saving technologies has resulted in serious land degradation and vulnerable to more frequent and severe climate impacts, particularly drought and flood. Conservation Agriculture has been introduced in the region for the last two decades to conserve, improve, and make more effective use of natural resources through the integrated management of available soil, water, and biological resources, combined with purchased external inputs. Significant benefits of CA have been observed and technically proved, but the adoption is still in very limited areas and mostly in research and demonstration plots. For wider adoption, understanding the constraints that hinder adoption and addressing for specific situations including intellectual, social, financial, biophysical, technical, and infrastructure constraints, or policy related support.