Appropriate Technology

After reading my article ” Technology and Development and Biotechnology and Development” you must have realized the importance of technology selection for a particular purpose. Now, in my article ” Biotechnology and Development“, I have mentioned three steps, which one has to follow to make a successful use of technology for development. The field of Appropriate Technology plays the role in second step of the whole process, i.e. Solution Selection.

What is Appropriate Technology?

It is technology which is developed to solve a target problem by considering not only the technical aspect but also non technical aspects like economics, society, politics, environment and culture. The outcome of the process involved in making the appropriate technology is that it is the best technology for a given set of conditions, with maximum benefit to cost ratio. It mainly gives customized solutions for the problems, which is a need of the hour, where it is very difficult to find silver bullet for all problems. The advantage of this process is that it increases teh implementation success considerably as it gives the best result.

One of the approach/tool used to determine the appropriate technology is to use Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), which I have also mentioned in my article ” Biotechnology and Development and Comparative Analysis of Different Technologies“. This tool ranks different technologies/solutions using weighted average based score for the intended list of attributes. Their are several software developed for this tool. One such software is “ChoiceResults”. 

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This article is followed by Quiz on Appropriate Technology.