Afghanistan in Your Hand

The Program for Culture and Conflict Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., has developed a database on Afghanistan to help in managing aid and development projects.

The provincial reconstruction teams that are staffed by Defense Department personnel, diplomats and even farm experts from the Agriculture Department use the database, which includes detailed information on the country's provinces such as lists of key leaders.

But the database is hard to access from remote and unwired areas of Afghanistan. But two students at the postgraduate school solved the problem. They created a smart phone application called Mobile Afghanistan, which includes detailed province-by-province information, including:

--maps

--leaders and presidential candidate profiles

--tribal and clan genealogies, divisions and histories

--economic, cultural and political development analyses

--security incidents and more

Robert Davis and Christopher Joers, both Air Force captains, developed the app as part of a class assignment from their professor, Thomas Johnson, director of the Program for Culture and Conflict Studies. Johnson dubbed the Davis' and Joers' app, Afghanistan in Your Hand, but Davis calls it, Cliff Notes for Afghanistan.

Mobile Afghanistan is available free on the Culture and Conflict Studies website and includes installation instructions easily understood by someone who does not have an advanced degree.