Data science: More than a breath of fresh air

By Professor Kieran Arasaratnam, Professor-in-Practice and Co-Director of the Gandhi Centre for Inclusive Innovation at Imperial College Business School

There is a reason London is called ‘the Big Smoke’. Elderly Londoners will remember the ‘pea-soupers’ of the mid-20th century – thick layers of dirty fog that would occasionally engulf the city. London was very much the Beijing of its day. Much has improved since those days but the city still has problems. A round 2 million Londoners – including 400,000 children – still live with illegal levels of air pollution. Under the law, hourly measurements of toxic nitrogen dioxide must not exceed 200 micrograms per cubic metre more than 18 times in a whole year. In London, toxic air has exceeded legal limits every year since 2010, killing an estimated 9,400 people on an annual basis.

The pollution is so bad that the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has called it a “public health emergency”. To counter the problem, the mayor has brought cleaner buses to routes through blackspots and introduced charges to deter dirty vehicles. This has helped bring pollution levels down, but it is no easy fix.

Improving air quality requires a deeper understanding of vehicle emissions. Today’s air quality metrics, used by Transport for London and the Greater London Authority, are not real-time. Without granular data on traffic, the city’s air pollution may be underestimated.

To tackle this problem, one group of data scientists is using the pre-existing network of traffic cameras around London to classify transport and estimate vehicle count and velocity, moment to moment. This gives us a better picture of air pollution in the capital, which can be used to optimise traffic and alleviate emissions.

This is one of the many projects being developed at the Gandhi Centre for Inclusive Innovation, at the Imperial College Business School, as part of the 12-week Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) Fellowship. The full-time summer fellowship is the result of collaboration with the University of Chicago.

The programme brings together several disciplines in which Imperial College London excels: financial innovation, information technology, artificial intelligence and social impact. By bringing together the greatest minds – comprising undergraduates and recent graduates – from all over the world to work on machine learning, big data and data science projects, the fellowship is producing data scientists with the skill set needed to solve real-world problems. The right kind of solution The goal of the fellowship is threefold: to train aspiring data scientists who want to tackle social challenges, to encourage governments and non-profits to better use data to make better decisions, and to create a community of people and organisations that can work together to make a positive impact.

As the title suggests, social good is at the heart of this work. The fellowship is about developing technology that doesn’t just provide commercial benefit but has massive implications for society and the environment. Our focus is to use ethical data science to extract actionable insight from big data that generates meaningful and positive outcomes.

Advances in fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning have the potential to transform society, but systemic imbalances still exist and must be addressed. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are a big part of this. That is why it is important that DSSG projects are developed within a fair and ethical framework, rooted in

Tip of the iceberg

The work being done with the City of London to tackle air pollution really is just the tip of the iceberg. It is one of five projects selected from over 50 submissions working with global governments and NGOs. Other projects taking place under the auspices of DSSG are: 1 The use of data science to expand a pre-emptive scheme to identify high-frequency 911 callers, improve healthcare and free up emergency services in the City of Memphis. 2 A partnership with a Ugandabased not-for-profit group that offers legal aid to people with no access to lawyers, using questionnaire data to increase the capacity and efficiency. 3 Improving heart health diagnoses from echocardiogram images using machine learning, in collaboration with the cardiology AI team at the University of Salamanca Hospital. 4 Enabling data-driven recommendations for the Institute of Employment and Vocational Training in Portugal to connect job seekers with more relevant and effective jobs and interventions.

In London, toxic air has exceeded legal limits every year since 2010, killing an estimated 9,400 people on an annual basis.

How to change the world

Is there something you want to change? Is there a vision you want to share and see implemented in the world around you? More than ever, one can feel that events are bigger than yourself, so much so that the influence of one person can have zero impact on the world’s problem – this could not be further from the truth. Can one person change the world? The answer is an emphatic yes, but if you want to see a change in the world, the first big change comes with you.

1. Think big World-changing ideas don’t come from small ambitions. Start big and then think of ways to implement your idea. There will also be external factors trying to scale down your vision – don’t do it yourself. A lot of this is about confidence and self-belief. Keep pushing your vision as far as you can take it to make it a reality.

2. Take action

Ideas are great but they also require action.

Think about the steps you can take to implement change:

What are your limitations? How can you eliminate those limitations or work around them to execute your plan? Ideas are great on paper but they mustn’t stay there!

3. Start small Rome wasn’t built in a day, so they say, and you won’t change the world in one grand gesture.

Real, lasting, positive change comes from a long series of small, determined actions. Think about what you need to do and the steps required to do it. Change is a marathon and persistence is the key.

4. Connect

One person can change the world but it doesn’t mean they must do it alone. To be the change you want to see in the world, you must be the trigger; the lynchpin. Find like-minded people and enlist help. Truly worldchanging impact comes from the power of many. Every great person in history had their allies; make sure you know who yours are.

human rights and the rule of law, in a way that respects the liberty, equality, dignity and privacy of all.

Furthermore, we must be confident that the systems we develop alleviate and not exacerbate the circumstances of those we wish to help. For data to have a significant social impact, our technology needs to be universally accessible so it can transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries.

Building a community “Data is transforming the way business and society works,” explains Professor Francisco Veloso, Dean of Imperial College Business School. “It is enabling a lot of very different, interesting things: new business models and new approaches.”

Professor Veloso explains that the aim of the fellowship is to create a community of data scientists who have been exposed to the real social benefits of data science by working on related projects. He adds: “They are going to be agents of change in the organisations they are going to be part of, and they are going to be influencers so that this can be much more present in everyday life in business and society.”

Indeed, the engine that really powers the innovation machine at the DSSG Fellowship is the people and talent. The fellowship has attracted some of the best minds to the business school. This year, the DSSG has enlisted 20 fellows from over 12 countries – chosen from 1,000 applicants through 200 interviews – working across various disciplines within the data science space.

The human element is important. With DSSG, true world-changing progress does not come from innovation alone but through

innovation with a conscience. To do this we need the right people – people who can not only solve problems with data but also seed a new generation of socially aware scientists. These data scientists will be trained with ethical principles in mind, and for that, there is no better place than Imperial.

By leveraging technology to have a greater social impact, the work of the DSSG Fellowship programme will unleash the potential of the information so that we are not just improving the lives of a few. The successful collaboration of various stakeholders is essential to applying data science for social good and creating a deep understanding of the problem domain.

The fellowship cannot do its work in isolation. Instead, we must think of ways to achieve continuity and sustainability. This can be done by creating a system that provides a feedback loop on external factors, that incorporates domain knowledge for experts in the government and NGO sector, and can help set expectations. Through this collaboration between academia, innovation, business, philanthropy and policy, we hope to build technology that brings hope, so that everyone – not just the people of London – can breathe easier when looking to the future.

Find out more about the Data Science for Social Good Fellowship at: www.imperial.ac.uk/ business-school/research/ gandhi-centre/about-gandhicentre/data-science-forsocial-good-dssg/