uDASH Digital Humanitarianism workshop

Earlier this year, uDASH researchers Wayne Wobcke and Siti Mariyah in the Data Science for Good theme hosted a two-day interdisciplinary workshop on digital humanitarianism. The workshop was co-sponsored by the Australian Human Rights Institute and the UNSW Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation.

The aim of the workshop was to discuss insights from the ARC-funded Discovery Project Data Science in Humanitarianism: Confronting Novel Law and Policy Challenges, while exploring future collaborations.

The first day was jointly hosted by uDASH and the UNSW Faculty of Law and Justice. Participants included humanitarian professionals from the private sector and academics from a range of disciplines. The program covered an invited talk from Eric Deeben (ONS, UK) describing the work of the Data Science Campus of the ONS, discussions of project publications on the implications of digital governance, and two panels: one on the use of data science in official statistics, and another on the opportunities and difficulties of cross-disciplinary collaboration.

The second day was hosted solely by uDASH and focused on the technical research of Machine Learning for Official Statistics. The workshop had a highly international flavour with speakers including Eric Deeben (ONS, UK), Rikke Munk Hansen (UNESCAP, Thailand) and Setia Pramana (BPS Statistics Indonesia). There was also a talk on UNSW work with DANE (Statistics Colombia), and the Australian perspective presented by Ric Clarke supported by colleagues from the ABS Methodology Division.