Giving Compass' Take:

• Stanford Social Innovation Review explores the use of data-driven problem-solving for migration (data collaborations), which will enable policymakers to enact more targeted interventions.

• More information is always good! The challenge is that many of the countries that people migrate from do not have the best technology and data gathering at their disposal. Collaboratives can help mitigate this issue.

• How is climate changing affecting migration patterns? Devex International Development explores.

According to recent United Nations estimates, there are globally about 258 million international migrants, meaning people who live in a country other than the one in which they were born; this represents an increase of 49 percent since 2000. Of those, 26 million people have been forcibly displaced across borders, having migrated either as refugees or asylum seekers. An additional 40 million or so people are internally displaced due to conflict and violence, and millions more are displaced each year because of natural disasters. It is sobering, then, to consider that, according to many observers, global warming is likely to make the situation worse ...

To mitigate negative impacts and anticipate opportunities arising from high levels of global migration, we need a better understanding of the various factors contributing to the international movement of people and how they work together.

Data — specifically, the widely dispersed data sets that exist across governments, the private sector, and civil society — can help alleviate today’s information shortcoming. Several recent initiatives show the potential of using data to address some of the underlying informational gaps. In particular, there is an important role for a new form of data-driven problem-solving and policymaking — what we call “data collaboratives.” Data collaboratives offer the potential for inter-sectoral collaboration, and for the merging and augmentation of otherwise siloed data sets. While public and private actors are increasingly experimenting with various types of data in a variety of sectors and geographies — including sharing disease data to accelerate disease treatments and leveraging private bus data to improve urban planning — we are only beginning to understand the potential of data collaboration in the context of migration and refugee issues.

Read the full article about the practice of data collaborations for migration by Stefaan G. Verhulst and Andrew Young at Stanford Social Innovation Review.