Why Capacity Building in Data Science Is So Critical
“We must work to ensure that this time of accelerated discovery and use serves more people, not fewer, and serves them with a commitment to equity and justice.”
There is a disconnect between the bold promises of the government and real, actionable solutions that have benefits at the community level. Too often that happens because, as Data.org points out in their 2023 Social Impact Report, “when a solution is dropped onto a community, rather than built with them, data, AI, and other technologies we deploy may be creating new or exacerbating existing problems.”
Community Lattice’s PEER and ABC tools, created as part of Data.org’s Inclusive Growth and Recovery Challenge, were made to bring critical information into the hands of the communities who need it, ensuring that the data used to make decisions around urban and environmental planning, land revitalization, and climate resiliency is accurate, widely available, comprehensive, and transparent to bias. Why does it matter? Without this kind of data and access to it, communities will lose out on securing resources intended for them.
Often, the actionable data communities need already exists; it just takes analytical skills to complete the data, make the right connections, and find the path forward.
As Data.org points out, “deploying advanced data strategies requires a commitment to capacity building—and it must happen across the ecosystem, from the organizations to the funders. Investing in the capacity of humans is the most powerful thing that we can do to move along the transformation curve at this early stage of the DSI sector’s growth.”
Our work in Austin illustrates the need for this capacity building. We’ve collaborated with government and community partners to pull together publicly-available environmental records, state records, and parcel data at a community level, showing that communities in Austin that are most vulnerable to gentrification are the same communities facing the most environmental injustice. This has led Austin’s Brownfields Revitalization Office to transform their approach to redevelopment and work with community leaders to benefit residents and the local economy.
There is an exciting future ahead if we can keep using data science research to close the gaps in environmental justice and brownfields planning. “We have the power to build—and fund—a data-driven social impact sector that drives affordable and innovative ways of addressing the multitude of challenges we face. But to do so, we must be thoughtful, open, and bold.”