New Data for Understanding Complex Systems

Conveners:

Steffen Fritz, Strategic Initiatives Program Director, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

Linda See, Senior Research Scholar, Advancing Systems Analysis Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

Abstract

Entirely new data sources have evolved over the last few decades to better understand complex systems. Our world has been getting increasingly complex and many underlying biophysical as well as socio-economic processes can be described as complex systems. New data sources, which help to better understand these complex systems, are big data from Earth observation, citizen science, mobile phone data, social media analysis, etc. Furthermore, there are new and unprecedented ways of analyzing these new data sources in combination with traditional data.

This session will be organized into 2 keynote presentations to set the scene for complexity research and how new data sources can help to provide additional insights. The presentations that follow will then demonstrate how those new data sources including Earth observation, citizen science, novel mobility data and mobile phone data, as well as data from the medical field can be collected and used. New applications of these data will demonstrate examples of closing existing research and data gaps including SDG reporting.

The first keynote will be given by Prof. Chris Brunsdon on his analysis he has done on COVID-19. He provides fascinating new spatial insights on the pandemic. The second keynote will be given by incoming CEO of the World Data Lab Wolfgang Fengler who will talk about how data can be used to predict the future in 2030 and introduce the energy clock. In the next talk Matteo Fontana from the Joint Research Center (Ispra, Italy) is going to show us how advanced data science methods in combination with novel data sources can help us to provide policy advice in particular in the field of social science (e.g. patterns of migration or dwelling, labour market analysis, policy evaluation etc.). In the next presentation Dilek Fraisl will show us how citizen science can be potentially used to monitor the sustainable development goals. She will demonstrate this with a case study in Ghana on marine litter pollution. The last talk will be given by Mr. Gerhard Svolba from the company SAS. He shows us how citizen science and machine learning in combination with satellite data can be used to fight deforestation in the Amazon as well as interesting findings about water provision of Lake Neusiedl in Austria.

Speakers:

Chris Brunsdon, Director, National Centre for Geocomputation, Maynooth University, Ireland

Wolfgang Fengler, Lead Economist for Africa, World Bank

Matteo Fontana, Data Scientist, Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission

Dilek Fraisl, Research Scholar, Advancing Systems Analysis Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

Gerhard Svolba, Data Scientist, Analytic Solution Architect, SAS Institute, Austria