Data science can be used to analyze massive amounts of data and further draw conclusions from those analyses for a better understanding of certain trends and making predictions, sometimes bold predictions! In fact, did you know that data science can be the next big tool to bring world peace? However impossible that may sound, data holds more power in the world than we assume. Far from simply providing insights and forecasts for the science and business related sectors, data is now being looked at for its potential to predict violence and conflict; further stopping it in its tracks!
Presumably, data science can be used in three major areas to promote peace and eradicate violence:
- Data analysis can help stop violence in its tracks.
- Data science can help foresee political unrests.
- Data science can help predict the escalation of violence.
However, it’s also very important to understand that by misusing data, the exact opposite can be realized. When its use is reversed, data science can influence a mass number of people to promote conflict and violence.
So, how exactly can data science contribute in making the world a better place to live? Let’s find out.
Understanding Online Extremism and Eliminating Offline Violence
In the past few years, with the development and rise of social media platforms, online extremism has increased significantly as represented in this comprehensive social media addiction statistics. Disturbingly now, these ‘harmless’ looking online activities that were supposed to only attack people mentally, are now being linked to actual real life offline violence. Social media platforms, as they have little to no censorship at all, have become a hub of planning and plotting violent acts and hate crimes offline. There have been a lot of efforts to shut such activities down by banning content and users but in most cases these bans are ineffective and even counter-productive.
As a result, there are now algorithms, systems, and software built upon the basic foundations of data science to monitor and track online extremism. The hope is that offline violence can be stopped at the right time. These data science systems are not only analyzing the content of social media posts, but are also attempting to understand their messaging and sentiments on a massive scale.
On the flip side, unfortunately, it’s also very possible that these systems can be used in a reverse manner to further more chaos. Data science systems are being accused of having biased algorithms that give rise to discrimination and further promote violence in vulnerable communities around the globe.
Predicting Political Unrest
Another major source of unrest and violence in the world is politics. Political unrest is very common in many countries around the world, from democracies, to tyrannical dictatorships, to even monarchies. Recurring violence and political unrest in such countries affect the world as a whole and hampers the global efforts towards sustainable development, growth and world peace while uplifting the cycle of impoverishment and further destabilization.
Data science can help to identify cycles and trends of violence that keep repeating and recurring. Data related to historic events and unrest that took place earlier in time are gathered and analyzed through automated data science systems to identify patterns. Such analyses and identification based patterns, it is hoped, can help to prevent political unrest before it begins.
Tracking climate change and conflict risks
Climate change is a leading environmental issue, affecting almost everyone and everything in some way or the other. However, what a lot of people don’t realize is that conflict and violence often is a product of environmental imbalances resulting from the changing climate. Experts have been warning us about the adverse effects of climate change on the human mind and emotions, and these are potential factors on increasing levels of violence. Currently, research on climatic change and its distressing effect on the human lives, livelihood, and its connection to arising conflicts is at the frontier of data science.
Data science is already being tested to effectively predict conflicts in certain regions of the world simply by tracking climate changes and the effects of these changes by gathering data on food, nutrition, weather, natural disasters, etc. , then correlating them with violence.
Conclusion:
In today’s data centric world, data is now in a state that’s way more powerful than we can even imagine. The strong and precise predictions that data science can offer in a vast number of sectors and fields is nearly unimaginable. So, if data can be used to potentially bring about world peace, it can certainly be used to benefit your business in a way that can open up paths to new growth opportunities. Learn more about data science services through E Source, a leading data science company empowering utility companies with essential data and analysis, precisely and dependably.
