Using data insights to address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a profound effect on the daily life of people across Europe, from economic repercussions to mental wellbeing. Policymakers and public health experts unanimously recognise the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on vulnerable persons: minors, ethnic minorities, migrants, girls and women, people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and the elderly. The uneven […]
Ethics as attention to context: recommendations for the ethics of artificial intelligence
This article shows that current ethics guidance documents and initiatives for artificial intelligence (AI) tend to be dominated by a principled approach to ethics. Although this brings value to the field, it also entails some risks, especially in relation to the abstraction of this form of ethics that makes it poorly equipped to engage with […]
Digging deep: The picture beneath the data on human trafficking

Initiatives to bring and use data in local government are emerging all around us. Calls for tenders, discussions in webinars and all-night hackathons are all deriving ways to use data to support better decision making around societal problems. Such problems that councils, townhalls and municipalities must deal with because they deeply affect their areas. How […]
The role of security and defence companies in EU migration and border control and the impact on the protection of the rights of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers.
Adopting an evidence-based approach to support adolescent mental health

In this interview, we discuss the new Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity programme dedicated to support adolescent mental health. Tamsyn Roberts, Programme Director, and Rob Parker, Head of Data Analytics, present the challenges, the methodology and the support provided by Trilateral Research in adopting emerging technologies to develop an evidence-based approach. What is the impact […]
Why take an interdisciplinary approach to data-driven decision-making around complex social problems?

“Data is the new gold”. This is a sentiment that has been repeatedly broadcasted by the big tech players and politicians alike. That may be the case, but what good is data if you do not know how to approach it to look for what you need to know, not to mention learn what you […]
Developing GDPR training materials for data protection authorities

We are delighted to introduce the STAR GDPR training material. As a result of the collaboration between the Law, Science, Technology & Society research group at VUB (https://lsts.research.vub.be/), the Hungarian data protection authority NAIH (https://naih.hu/) and Trilateral Research, as part of the EC funded project STAR, we have developed a set of General Data Protection […]
A data science approach to social science problems: examining political bias in false information on social media

The 2016 United States (U.S) presidential election highlighted the powerful influence that social media can have on politics. Fake news stories shared on social media are argued to have swayed the outcome of the last U.S. election and a recent article in the Guardian questioned: “Will fake news wreck the coming [UK] general election?” With […]
Data-driven insights into the Colombian conflict: a statistical analysis of child soldiers trends in the department of Antioquia, Colombia

Witnessing armed conflict and violence at an early age can become a source of trauma for young people, which is why the protection of children in armed conflict is a NATO priority. Alice Farmer, a children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, labelled child soldiering as “the Hunger Games of the Real World”. The reader […]
How will AI and Big Data shape our future?

Artificial intelligence is already having a major impact on our lives, society and economy for the good and the bad. Currently, AI raises many issues relating to privacy, data protection, discrimination, autonomy, power asymmetries, fairness, among others, but what will AI be doing in six years from now, in 2025? What measures should policymakers be […]