Trend #4: Data intelligence will transform social solution design

5 Trends in Social Innovation

“Data-driven intelligence has been used successfully in technical and business endeavors, but a very different situation prevails in the social arena. A large chasm exists between the potential of data-driven information and its actual use in helping solve social problems,” Kevin Desouza and Kendra Smith wrote in a 2014 article on SSIR.

“Some social problems can be readily solved using big data, such as using traffic data to help ease the flow of highway traffic or using weather data to predict the next hurricane. But what if we want to use data to help us solve our most critical problems, such as homelessness, human trafficking, and education? And what if we not only want to solve these problems but do so in a way that the solutions are sustainable for the future?”

It’s not that the social sector hasn’t recognized the need for data. But in the past few years the emergence of data analysis groups like Bayes Impact, Social Cops and Palantir have equipped social organizations with new intelligence to guide their strategies and inspire innovative solutions.

“With mobile technology, we can hear directly from factory workers in Bangladesh in real time. Anonymous feedback from 20 factories is interesting, but data from 200 factories is what really drives change. At that scale, we can begin to predict and prevent a fire or building collapse before it happens.” — Heather Franzese, Good World Solutions

This year, we will see the most aggressive adoption of data intelligence for guiding social solution design.

“In my view, it was data that was going to be our best bet as we tried to reinvent the way we work with policy-makers,” said HyeSook Chung, Executive Director of DC Action for Children in a November 2014 blog.

DC Action, a nonprofit focused on improving child well-being, partnered with DataKind in 2014 to do the analysis work they didn’t have the resources to do themselves.

“I wish we could afford to hire staff like Google or Amazon, but instead we have an army of data scientists via DataKind. [They] equalize the playing field in the competitive world of big data analytics for a small but fierce nonprofit like ours,” said Chung.

See how Palantir is working with the Carter Center to track the crisis in Syria.

Now, DC Action is able to analyze family and child data in specific neighborhoods, and using predictive analytics, attempt to identify potential areas of future child abuse cases.

Polaris Project, a nonprofit that works to end modern slavery, receives 100,000 calls via the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline (NHTRC) each year. Working with Palantir, they’re now able to make connections between the calls, identify global trafficking patterns and networks, locate emergency response resources and identify services for trafficking victims in a matter of seconds.

The San Francisco Department of Emergency Communications is working with Bayes Impact Fellows to build a model that will minimize overall response times and identify the optimal number and placement of ambulances across San Francisco. The algorithm underlying the dispatch system targets a 9.5 minute response time and optimizes ambulance dispatch by shortest distance to response location. The partnership will also allow the Department to know how many ambulances are needed at various times of day and optimize the starting location of ambulance fleets. The implications of tools like these on social innovations will be paramount in 2015.