Webinar Series: Harnessing Data Innovation for Migration Policy
Migration has risen as one of the most challenging issues confronting policy makers around the world. The growing complexity of internal and cross-border human mobility has highlighted the need for accurate, timely, and reliable information to develop migration policy — a need that traditional data sources are often not well-suited to meet.
In 2018, IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) — in cooperation with the EU Commission Knowledge Centre on Migration and Demography (KCMD) and the GovLab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering — launched the Big Data for Migration Alliance (BD4M) to harness the potential of new data sources (i.e. satellite imagery, mobile networks, social media and artificial intelligence) to better understand migration-related phenomena.
One focus area of the BD4M is to facilitate access to and responsible use of non-traditional data to inform migration policy. New data sources can offer a vast amount of data relevant for migration governance, as demonstrated in several projects featured on the Data Innovation Directory of the BD4M. At the same time, much of this potential has yet remained untapped due to a series of challenges including difficulties in accessing relevant data, lack of adequate collaboration frameworks, data quality and reliability, as well as security, ethical and privacy issues.
The webinar series Harnessing Data Innovation for Migration Policy launched today by the BD4M, aims to discuss good practices in using non-traditional data sources in the realms of migration and human mobility. Drawing on good practices from around the world and across different sectors, the series will bridge technical and practical aspects by providing hands-on insights into how non-traditional data sources have been utilized to analyse migration and inform policy. Topics addressed in the series will include how to successfully develop cross- sector collaborations and address ethical, security and privacy issues.
The first BD4M Webinar session titled Estimating migrant stocks and flows using social media data will take place on November 3 at 15:00 CET and will feature:
- Emilio Zagheni (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research);
- Ingmar Weber (Qatar Computing Research Institute); and
- Jisu Kim (University of Pisa).
