Papers and articles
AI for monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals and supporting and promoting action and policy development
The United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) were ratified with much enthusiasm by all UN member states in 2015. However, subsequent progress to meet these goals has been hampered by a lack of data available to measure the SDG indicators (SDIs), and a lack of evidence-based insights to inform effective policy responses. This paper outlines an interdisciplinary program of research into the use of artificial intelligence techniques to support measurement of the SDIs, using both machine learning methods to model SDI measurements and explainable AI techniques to present the outputs in a human-friendly manner.
Delivering on the promise of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence tools that seek to address complex public problems need to be developed with the input of the decision-makers who will implement them.
Can AI transform public decision-making for sustainable development? An exploration of critical earth system governance questions.
The inability of global governments to meaningfully progress sustainable development over the past three decades is deeply concerning. AI is increasingly framed as a solution for achieving such outcomes, sometimes uncritically. We argue that: 1) for AI to improve public decision-making, the conditions and factors influencing public decisions must be better understood and considered; 2) to mainstream AI-enabled insights, transformations of those conditions and factors are necessary; and, 3) critical governance questions about those transformations must be addressed. In so doing, we seek to advance critical knowledge on the, potentially, transformative implications of AI in public decision-making.
Port Phillip Bay Nutrient Modelling using Bayesian Networks
This report documents a pilot study exploring the usefulness of Bayesian networks (BN) — a promising approach in the field of Artificial Intelligence — to address complex public problems. The main aim of the study was to develop a tool that could support the prioritisation of public spending to maximise water quality gains in Port Phillip Bay and more generally gain insight in the usefulness of BN as a structured and transferrable approach to complex public decision-making challenges, such as in relation to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).