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UN Unveils Initial Findings from Research on Big Data for Development

Anticipating and preparing for food-price rises, job and housing losses SecretaryGeneral's Global Pulse initiative is working with leading research firms and institutions to demonstrate potential uses of real-time data in development work.
8 December 2011 | NEW YORK, NY Policymakers might have been able to gain valuable insights weeks or months earlier and used them to take corrective action on major economic dislocations if the current trend toward garnering big data had been used in the cause of development, and not just marketing, UN experts indicated on Thursday (8/11). The private sector is analyzing this new data to understand its customers in real-time, the SecretaryGeneral told participants at a UN headquarters briefing. Much of this data contains signals that are relevant to development. We must use it to tell us what is happening, while it is happening. Initial findings from a series of collaborative research projects that Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moons Global Pulse initiative has undertaken in partnership with leading data-research companies and institutions Crimson Hexagon, Jana, PriceStats, SAS, and a consortium of French centers led by the Complex Systems Institute of Paris Ile-de-France and IFRIS, support the potential of this approach. Global Pulse, an innovation initiative of the UN Secretary-General, is researching new data sources and applying innovative technologies to track international development in real-time. Analysis of social media and other sources of Big Data represent an untapped opportunity to improve targeting of policies and programmes to help communities in need. Results from the initial series of projects have underlined several promising approaches for real-time monitoring of unemployment and food security. The research projects, which were designed to test the feasibility of real-time data collection and analysis in development work, include: Real-Time E-Pricing of Bread. This project, a collaboration with PriceStats, entailed the construction of a daily bread price index for six Latin American countries. The findings illustrate how the online retail prices reveal offline street price changes weeks before official sales numbers were able to reflect the inflation, potentially allowing policy makers to better prepare for the negative effect on consumers. Unemployment through the Lens of Social Media. Online conversations on blogs and forums about bleak job prospects and job satisfaction were occurring months in advance of actual job losses, forecasting the rise of unemployment in the US and Ireland and revealing the strategies that the unemployed are pursuing to overcome their new economic situation. In collaboration with SAS, the sentiment analysis revealed that the increases in the volume of on-line employmentrelated conversations in Ireland which were characterized by confusion show up 3 months

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before increases in unemployment, while in the US conversations about the loss of housing increased 2 months after unemployment spikes. Tracking the Food Crisis via Online News. This multi-partner project with the Complex Systems Institute of Paris Ile-de-France & IFRIS analyzed thousands of news items related to food security issues in French language press.* *The analysis shows that as the 2008 global economic crisis unfolded, news coverage shifted from a focus on humanitarian issues to food price volatility, whereas in 2011, the news focus has shifted to social unrest. A Global Snapshot of Well-being through Mobile Phones. This project surveyed a sample of the 2.1 billion mobile phone subscribers that can be incentivized through Janas global research platform. Simultaneous mobile phone surveys were deployed in dozens of countries around the world, demonstrating how household-level information can be gathered rapidly and at unprecedented scale. Twitter and Perceptions of Crisis-Related Stress. A research project with Crimson Hexagon, a global provider of social media analysis software, analyzed Twitter data from the US and Indonesia to measure the degree to which cost pressures related to food, fuel, housing, and the economy are discussed in online conversations. The research analyzes trends in these topics in conjunction with themes such as afford, showing how the volume and topics of the conversations change over time, reflecting populations concerns.

Findings from these projects will help to establish new methodological approaches for analyzing real-time data, identify tools which can provide a faster and clearer understanding of population behavior during periods of stress, and contribute to the development of new proxy indicators for real-time tracking of development. Miguel Luengo-Oroz, Data Scientist at Global Pulse, said it is essential for the United Nations to collaborate with partners from the private sector and academia at the cutting edge of new data science and real-time analytics. Multidisciplinary collaborative projects are a fantastic approach for adapting new tools and methods for global development. These preliminary findings represent just the beginning of what new real-time data sources can tell us about human well-being. About Global Pulse Global Pulse is an initiative of the UN Secretary-General, which functions as an innovation lab, bringing together expertise from inside and outside the United Nations to harness today's new world of digital data and real-time analytics for global development. The initiative contributes to a future in which access to better information sooner makes it possible to keep international development on track, protect the world's most vulnerable populations, and strengthen resilience to global shocks. Visit * www.unglobalpulse.org. About Complex Systems Institute of Paris Ile-de-France & IFRIS The Complex Systems Institute of Paris le-de-France is an interdisciplinary research and training center supported by 16 of the major research institutions in France which promotes international strategic projects on complex adaptive systems. The Institute For Research, Innovation and Society (IFRIS, http://www.ifris.org) brings together nearly 200 French researchers involved in the field ofScience, Technology and Society. They focus on the study of the governance of science and innovation and on the use of scientific knowledge for global governance. IFRIS digital platform, CortText, is creating new tools for use of big data by Social Sciences and Humanities. About Crimson Hexagon Crimson Hexagon, founded in 2007, is the global provider of social media analysis software that delivers business intelligence for brands and market research professionals. Powered by patent-pending technology developed at Harvard Universitys Institute for Quantitative Social Science, the Crimson Hexagon ForSight platform overcomes the limits of traditional market research by delivering a real-time view of how engaged online consumers truly think and feel about a brand or issue. For more information, go to http://www.crimsonhexagon.com
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About Jana Janas proprietary technology empowers global organizations to engage directly with emerging market consumers in over 85 countries via their mobile phones. More than 2.1 billion targeted consumers can earn free mobile airtime in exchange for completing surveys or purchasing products. Visit http://www.jana.com for more information. About PriceStats PriceStats is the leading source of high-frequency inflation statistics around the world, providing insights into global inflation trends on a daily basis. Our company develops inflation series using a proprietary technology that gathers and processes online-retail prices. We currently monitor prices in more than 80 countries across multiple economic sectors. The company based in Cambridge is a spin-off from the Billion Prices Project, a research initiative at MIT, founded by professors Alberto Cavallo and Roberto Rigobon. For more information, visit http://www.pricestats.com About SAS SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions, SAS helps customers at more than 50,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW. For media inquiries about Global Pulse, contact: Anoush Rima Tatevossian Strategic Communications Officer, Global Pulse +1 646-723-4806 tatevossian@un.org

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