Impact Case Studies

Big Data for international development:

Lack of geo-demographic intelligence in the developing world can

also seriously hamper the development efforts of both government

organisations and NGOs, such as the World Bank. The team is

working with these institutions, alongside the Department for

International Development (DFID), to examine how Big Data can

assist international development.

One example project, now underway in East Africa in partnership

with TiGo, Tanzania’s second largest telecommunication company, is

applying predictability models to historical mobility data in order to

inform disaster management. Case studies include everything from

detecting failure of local water pumps in rural Tanzania, through to

assessing the behavioural impact of Dar es Salaam’s 2014 floods

(which displaced over 10,000 people and destroyed houses, roads,

bridges, public buildings and crops).

Data Science in the health sector:

The Neodemographics project team is also working extensively

with the NHS in knowledge transfer, and the application of cutting

edge techniques to the health sector. This has led to a range of

analyst training projects, such as predictive modelling of NHS bed

occupancy via machine learning. NHS researchers are now also

being hosted within Horizon, enabling the direct transfer of more

specialist knowledge.

Recently the project has been awarded further funding from the

Newton Fund to model the transmission of dengue fever in Malaysia

(occurrences of which rose in the UK by 60% in the 2014), ensuring

that Horizon’s analytics impact with the health sector continues to

expand.

For further information, please contact:

Dr James Goulding

Email: