SoGood 2016 - 2016 Workshop on Data Science for Social Good

SoGood 2016 - ECML PKDD 2016 Workshop on Data Science for Social Good
Riva del Garda, Italy, September 19th, 2016
The possibilities of Data Science for contributing to social, common, or public good are often not sufficiently perceived by the public at large. Data science applications are already helping in serving people at the bottom of the economic pyramid, aiding people with special needs, helping international cooperation, or dealing with environmental problems, disasters, and climate change.
Unfortunately, they are often given little prominence in regular conferences. They are often grouped under session labels that hide their commonality (such as"Social networks" or "Predictive models" or even under the catch-all term "Applications"). Furthermore, such forums tend to have a strong bias for papers that are novel in the strictly technical sense (new algorithms, new kinds of data analysis, new technologies) rather than on the social impact.
This workshop will discuss and (re)define what is Data Science for social good, how it could be pushed forward, and in what ways the scientific community can contribute. In this workshop we plan to attract papers presenting applications (which may, or may not require new methods) of Data Science to Social Good, or else that take into account social aspects of Data Science methods and techniques.
A non-exclusive list of application domains is:
* Public safety and disaster relief
* Access to food, water, and utilities
* Efficiency and sustainability
* Government transparency
* Data journalism
* Economic development
* Education
* Social services
* Healthcare
The novelty of the application and its social impact will be major selection criteria. Additionally, "social good" projects are often associated to the idea of non-profit; we are particularly interested in applications that have built a viable business model, that is, that while not defined as "non-profit", still have social good as their main focus.
Workshop format:
This is a half-day workshop, comprising:
* A keynote talk, speaker to be announced.
* Oral presentation of the accepted papers.
* A panel: What is Data Science for social good, how can the scientific
community contribute and organize itself, how can it create self-sustaining
business models.
Paper submission:
Authors should submit a PDF version in Springer LNCS style through the SoGood 2016 EasyChair website, https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sogood2016
Although most of the papers are expected to be within 8 and 15 pages long, there is no hard limit on paper length, within reason. Accepted papers may be required to address change requirements from the PC, including length changes, for the camera-ready version.
Submitting a paper to the workshop means that if the paper is accepted at least one author commits to presenting the paper at the workshop.
Paper publication:
Accepted papers will appear in the workshop website and, as workshop proceedings, in the CEUR Workshop proceedings series. Further publication possibilities will be studied after the workshop.
Important Dates:
* Paper submission deadline: July 4th, 2016
* Acceptance notification: July 25th, 2016
* Final versions due: August 8th, 2016
* Workshop: September 19th, 2016
PC members
* Gustavo Batista (U. Sao Paulo)
* Concha Bielza (U.P. Madrid)
* Albert Bifet (Telecom ParisTech)
* Ulf Brefeld (Leuphana U. Lueneburg)
* Andre Carvalho (U. Sao Paulo)
* Carlos Castillo (Eurecat Barcelona)
* Michelangelo Ceci (U. degli studi di Bari)
* Nick Diakopoulos (U. Maryland)
* Geoffrey Holmes (U. Waikato)
* Nathalie Japkowicz (U. of Ottawa)
* Irena Koprinska (U. of Sydney)
* Pedro Larranaga (U.P. Madrid)
* Josep-Lluis Larriba (UPC BarcelonaTech)
* Mirco Musolesi (U. College London)
* Mykola Pechenizkiy (Eindhoven U. Techology)
* Celia Reyes (U. Tec. de la Mixteca)
* Rita P. Ribeiro (U. Porto)
* Cynthia Rudin (Duke/MIT)
* Myra Spiliopoulou (U. Magdeburg)
* Alicia Troncoso (Pablo de Olavide U.)
* Albrecht Zimmermann (U. Caen)
Organizers and contact:
* Ricard Gavalda (UPC BarcelonaTech), gavalda-AT-cs.upc.edu
* Indre Zliobaite (Aalto U. and U. of Helsinki), indre.zliobaite-AT-aalto.fi
* Joao Gama (U. Porto and LIAAD Inesc Tec, Porto), jgama-AT-fep.up.pt
Workshop site: https://sites.google.com/site/ecmlpkdd2016sogood/