Data for Development: Using Data Analytics to Accelerate Energy Access

The Energy Access Project at Duke University (EAP) and RTI International cordially invite you to attend the event Data for Development: Using Data Analytics to Accelerate Energy Access. 

Achieving universal access to reliable electricity is crucial to improving broader development outcomes. The absence of consistent, reliable, and up-to-date data on energy services and outcomes prevents timely and effective decision-making on critical matters of policy and investment. Data analytics and machine learning offer great promise in data-poor environments for identifying existing conditions and measuring impacts, obviating the need for expensive ground surveys in many cases.

This event will bring together key players from research and practice communities working on energy analytics applications in the developing world to assess the state of knowledge and practice, facilitate collaborations, explore the potential for and challenges to creating an open knowledge network for energy data, and identify existing and future data sources. The session aims to generate a briefing paper that documents the potential for machine learning and data analytics to contribute to a better understanding of the links between energy and socioeconomic development, and identifies the highest-priority opportunities, needs, and barriers to further work at this intersection.

We hope that you can join us for this event. A preliminary agenda can be found below. Lunch and light refreshments will be provided. Please RSVP by Tuesday, December 3, 2019.

Schedule:

8:00-8:30am Registration + Coffee

8:30-8:40am Welcome and Overview

8:40-9:05am Toward a Global Energy Data Commons 

9:05-10:30am Panel Discussion: Making data available and usable: Collection, interoperability, openness

10:30-10:50am Coffee Break

10:50am-12:15pm Panel Discussion: Using data: Applications, frontiers, barriers

12:15-1:00pm Lunch and networking

1:00-2:00pm Charting a course: Moderated discussion on breaking barriers to creating and utilizing data to accelerate energy access. (White paper development, collaboration, and next steps)

2:00pm Wrap-up and networking