19/03/2016 Click - Short Edition

In around 10 minutes we'll have Newswatch but first on BBC News,

Since then, the region has seen a mass movement

of people as an estimated 4 million refugees have fled into neighbouring

countries including Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

Distributing aid and processing papers for

It means that many people can wait at the border for a long time

But for refugees entering Jordan, new ways

of using biometric technology to identify people could make for

quicker processing times and even easy access to aid through banks.

And there is plenty of other inventive tech ideas to

improve daily life coming from the refugees themselves.

We have been to Jordan's capital Amman and the Zaatari camp

We are on the road to Zaatari, the largest refugee camp in Jordan.

Only a few miles from Syria, many people have come here

from Daraa, often called the cradle of revolution for its early role

The camp was formed four years ago when people fled the war

Now over 80,000 people are estimated to live here.

Despite facing incredible hardship, there is an atmosphere

of resilience and entrepreneurial spirit which gives it

In the camp, many refugees are working and there

Once an empty desert, thousands of shops and homes almost

The main street is called Sham D'Elysees, which is a play

on two things, the word the Syrians refer to Damascus by,

You can find everything from bridal dresses, to vegetable

shops and barbershops, and even quite a few mobile phone shops.

One of the shop is run by Mohammed who showed me one

Do have one with a bigger compartment?

I haven't seen these tablets before, they have games for kids from China.

And if you break your phone, you are in good hands here.

There are several workshops open in the evening in many spare parts for

sale including the Samsung batteries for just a few dollars each.

We also watched a report he had been featured in talking

about how he stays in touch with his family in Syria through WhatsApp.

Not many people here have laptops he says, but everyone

Keeping in touch with family back home is

critical for those whose lives have been torn apart by the conflict.

The majority of Syrian refugees in Jordan live in

the capital where at least 600,000 are registered with the UNHCR.

This is the waiting area for refugees.

This is where they wait to process their cases,

whether it is a interviews to renew asylum certificates or to follow up

on their cases on an individual basis, whether it

is for cash assistance, health assistance or legal assistance.

Whatever they may need, we have it here.

We have around 3000-4000 individuals per day and this is why

the registration centre is the largest in the Middle East.

We process their cases on a daily basis, whether it is

for registration for other units or even resettlement interviews.

The problem of registering so many new people has led to a solution

All refugees to enter Jordan have their irises scanned to confirm

their identities and are given an identification card

The process is two steps, with initial enrollment

Today we meet a family from Homs who are renewing their asylum documents.

The iris scan is considered the most secure form of biometrics as

fingerprints can change over time, especially for young children.

Along with ID cards, the data is shared with local partners to try

Bank accounts are automatically created with the Cairo Amman bank

where aid money can be taken out in the blink of an eye.

There is no need to register information again with the bank,

as it comes through the UNHCR secure iCloud server based in Amman

There is some information that would be shared with the government,

actually for their service and for our service actually

because the Jordanian authority needs to know the numbers.

But other information, this will be 100% secret

He might tell me that he was tortured in his country.

The general information, we will tell him that this might be

shared with the government, and actually they agree.

Back in Zaatari technology is being used in inventive ways to

The camp is a community of makers and one of the most innovative

Four years ago, he fled the violence in Syria with two family members.

They all have disabilities and struggle to get around

He wanted to have more independence and designed electric bike

Giving refugees access to technology and education is the focus

One of its startups, 3DMeena, is focused on fabrication

A Syrian refugee volunteer named Assam, became so efficient with the

machines here that he became the company's Technical Director, even

teaching members of the Jordanian Royal rehab centre how to 3D print.

He was an ambulance driver in Syria and lost his leg

As well as customising his own prosthetics, he helped

a young Yemeni boy named Zayn, who lost part of his hand in a fire.

They were able to include elements of Zayn's favourite cartoon

character in the design, all for just 75 US dollars.

Assam also helped develop a 3D printed system using feedback

for another Syrian refugee named Ahmed who was blinded by a sniper

The echolocation system helps guide him to walk around unaided.

There are 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Jordan and that is

So we need to find the best way to engage with them.

As we can't just keep ignoring the problem, it is opportunity

for us to find an economy in Jordan where we don't have much resources.

This is a change for us more than a burden.

The company plans to open fabrication labs

in a refugee camp in Turkey and in a northern Jordanian city.

It is a small but positive step to harness the talents of people forced

into exile and help them to integrate to a new country country.

It might not look it, but it is a world record.

This is the fastest data transfer in history.

Researchers here at University College London are sending it

commissioned through optic fibre at speeds of 1.125 terabits per second.

It is also 50,000 times faster than the average UK home broadband

connection, and still much faster than the fat internet connections

And it is this internet backbone that this research is

As with all experiments, this looks very experimental,

It is sending data over 3000 kilometres of optic fibre.

It's actually sending it through 100km of fibre 30 times.

Then it comes to the receiver over here.

There it is, the data coming in at one terabit per second.

This is a clever mix of digital signal processing to filter out

the noise, and physics, which attempts to use every part of the

In order to increase the data rate, we are typically instead

of using one colour light we are using a number of colour lights

and combining them into one big what we call a super channel.

Then, we increase the amount of information we can send on each

By using these cunning techniques, the team here say upgrading

the internet won't take a lot of digging.

You can use the same optic fibre cables and just change

But will we ever really need all that extra speed?

Well, history would suggest, yes we would.

To be able to send much greater volumes of data at much higher

speeds over existing fibres, all the devices constantly sending

data - your televisions, computers, cameras, sensors, the toothbrush.

Terabits to hundreds of terabits of data, the minimum necessary to

transmit all the data we are currently generating and receiving.

That is it for the short version, much more on the longer version

which you can watch on iPlayer.