Researchers use AI to uncover 11,456 social innovation projects

of the EU Updated Social Agendaa comprehensive program launched in 2008 to improve the European economy, combat the climate crisis and generally improve the quality of life of all Europeans overall, is a landmark initiative. At its core is the idea of ​​’social innovation’, a modality involving the creation of new social services and models applicable in a transnational paradigm.

Examples of “social innovation” include public libraries, open universities, and the workers’ rights movement. But it’s not just about bringing people together to solve problems or create an atmosphere of equality.

Social services that are successful in wealthy urban areas may be completely useless in rural settings, and vice versa. How the human factor, the climate crisis and other environmental factors affect different communities , given the difficulties faced by minorities and refugees, the task of serving the EU agenda across borders becomes exponentially more difficult.

But that doesn’t stop the global community from trying. Since the Agenda was enacted, the social innovation sector has grown from a handful of organizations seeking to provide multinational citizen services and solutions to a comprehensive ecosystem that includes thousands of actors operating in over 150 countries. Did. This, so to speak, resulted in an excess of wealth.

Until recently, numerous attempts over the past two decades to codify the number of social innovation projects, resources, and services underway have met with little success. According to a team of European researchers, “Comprehensive data are lacking to study social innovation.”

A team of researchers from the Universities of Strathclyde and Manchester in the UK and the University of Leon in Spain recently published the following results: Comprehensive research they use machine learning artificial intelligence Create the European Social Innovation Database (ESID).

So how many social innovation projects did you find? As you can see in the headline of this article, it was a whopping 11,456. Previous attempts to build similar databases have averaged between 500 and 1,000 entries.

The research team was able to greatly expand these numbers by using text crawlers to search for data online and using AI to separate, label, and score that data. Essentially, the team built their own search and ranking system for their social innovation project. This might sound a little more exciting than building an AI to sort Google search results, but it’s actually pretty revolutionary in its own right.

The problem with social innovation is that it’s a bit of a vague term. For example, you can measure the number and age of deaths in a particular region in a particular year. From that data, life expectancy and mortality can be gleaned. But what we can’t do with that particular database is that a local library campaign to encourage EU seniors to get regular free blood pressure checks has had some impact on any of these data points. It is to determine whether there is

The ESID database significantly bridges the gap between reported and available knowledge. Traditional datasets rely on accurate reporting. An automated system allows the team to get the data to them. Rather, using machines can exponentially speed up the data collection process.

But more importantly, the database is also very robust. Its primary audience is researchers who want to know how well social innovation initiatives are working. And to that end, he included four types of scores, intended to further categorize projects by their outline, their geography, topic, and how the term “social innovation” is defined. Classify data by categories.

The more granular the data, the more difficult it is for humans to parse without further assistance. A.I.

In the future, researchers hope to expand the range of projects the system can find and give the system the ability to keep entries in the database up-to-date as sources change over time. For now, though, if you want to check out what is arguably the world’s largest searchable social innovation database, here Go to the official website of ESID.