Data analytics to save lives? Reduce hunger? Cut poverty? Unquestionably, we’ve all already seen the tremendous value that analytics can have for the success of commercial organizations. How about humanitarian and societal challenges? As one of ABW’s founders, we believe that analytics can also contribute to solving these kinds of major challenges facing humanity: from hunger, to deforestation, to the extinction of flora and fauna, et cetera.

“There is so much value to be created by applying analytics to the SDGs, the potential is enormous” says Dick Den Hertog, Science-to-Impact Director of ABW and Professor at the University of Amsterdam. That’s why The Analytics for a Better World Institute was officially launched last year, June 2022, founded by ORTEC, the University of Amsterdam (UvA), and Dimitris Bertsimas of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

ABW enables social good, sustainable development and humanitarian aid organizations to scale up the use of analytics, by educating and helping them build strategic roadmaps to grow their analytics capability, carrying out analytics projects and developing new analytics applications and techniques related to the SDGs.

“Over the past 40 years, we have learned that analytics is not ‘just some technical tooling’. You need much more to make data, mathematics, and statistics work in practice”, says van Duijn. “From the science side of things, much has been written about analytics and its role in boosting humanitarian endeavors, but it is rarely applied in practice”, says den Hertog. “To build something real, you need software and business skills. Fortunately, that’s what ORTEC does best, making this the perfect combination.

The past year, the focus of the Analytics for a Better World Institute was primarily on expanding the partner network and running impact projects. At ABW's recent Conference, they reflected on their first year: 'We’re happy with all the contributions and engagement we received from many companies and researchers, and very proud of the successful built up and extension of the ABW non-profit network, and various impact projects and collaborations we’ve been working on so far.' says Robert Monné, Managing Director at ABW. Two impact stories he likes to highlight are Amref and 510/Red Cross:

This article is the first one out of the ‘Jointly for social impact’ series: every article will highlight another social impact project done through ORTEC’s and ABW’s collaborations and partnerships. What’s more to come includes for instance: 510/Red Cross improving humanitarian aid through data, the Ocean Cleanup deploying advanced technology to rid the oceans of plastic and collecting data and using analytics to minimize the costs of cleaning up, and Amref creating lasting health change in Africa thanks to data.