DSSGx Munich 2023 took place from July to August 2023.
All project results are open source - learn more about them & our fellow teams here!
Land sealing dataset and analysis for better understanding of climate change
In 2011, the European Commission stated the target of reducing land consumption to no net land-take by 2050. National strategies for sustainable development adopted the target, following different timeframes for implementation. Protecting biodiversity and strengthening climate-adaptation affords integrated and climate-oriented planning on state, regional and local levels. As for now, distributed responsibilities and competing interests for new settlements conflict with sustainable land use. Scattered documentation of governance decisions, gaps and errors in documentation impede the transparent planning and data-based decision making. Having no central platform to analyze land use plans on regional and local level impedes democratic negotiation on how to deal with climate change.
In this project, the fellows used web/document scraping to produce a dataset about land parcels from districts across Germany. For each land parcel, the dataset supplied important details about their land use planning - and consequently, land sealing. Afterwards, the fellows assisted researchers from various urban planning organizations within Germany, to analyze the data and answer questions about climate-change and climate-resilience in these regions.
Fire Hydrant Range Finder Web Application
The civil protection/fire brigade currently does not have a good tool that shows the range of fire hoses on a map and takes natural obstacles such as stairs, rails, buildings, etc. into account. However, this is essential for planning. A representation of the range of extinguishing water extraction points as the crow flies is not sufficient to take these factors into account.
The fellows will develop a web app that has two main functions. First, after selecting an extinguishing water extraction point and a variable hose length, the program supplies a polygon of the area that can be reached from there. Second, after selecting a building or a hypothetical fire site and a variable hose length, the program delivers a polygon within which should have an extinguishing water extraction point .
This enables the following immediate application :
Improved planning of the coverage of fire water extraction points
Sighting of water sources in the vicinity of known/probable fire sites (e.g. chemical plants)
The tool is constructed in such a way that the actual extraction points do not have to be known. The input of geolocations from the fire brigade/ disaster control will be an additional feature of the program.
DSSGx Munich 2023 was organized by the Social Data Science and AI Lab (SODA, Prof. Frauke Kreuter) and the Chair of Statistical Learning and Data Science (Prof. Bernd Bischl) at the Institute of Statistics, LMU Munich. Meet the team here!
Jacob Beck holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Sociology and is a PhD Student at LMU Munich.
He interned at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg and participated at the “Data Science for Social Good” fellowship. For DSSGx he is in charge of the overall organisation and project management.
John ‘Jack’ Collins is a PhD Student in Sociology at the Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences, University of Mannheim. Before starting PhD, Jack was a Senior IT Consultant specialising in data engineering, analytics and software development.
Susanne Dandl is a researcher at the Department of Statistics, LMU Munich. She co-organized DSSGx UK in collaboration with Warwick University 2021. For DSSGx Munich 2023, she is responsible for everything related to the fellows, from the application process, communication to the kick-off event.
Unai Fischer Abaigar is a PhD student at the Department of Statistics, LMU Munich. For DSSGx Munich 2023, he is responsible for project scoping and the overall organisation.
Jan Simson is a PhD student at the Department of Statistics, LMU Munich. For DSSGx Munich 2023, he is responsible for project scoping and management.
Wiebke Weber is Scientific Manager at the Chair for Statistics and Data Science in Social Sciences and the Humanities (SoDa) at LMU Munich and Research Fellow at the Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology (RECSM) of Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain.
Clara Strasser Ceballos is a PhD Student at the Chair for Statistics and Data Science in Social Sciences and the Humanities (SoDa) at LMU Munich. She holds a Master's degree in Statistics and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Munich (LMU).
Christoph Kern is Junior Professor of Social Data Science and Statistical Learning at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and Project Director at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). For DSSGx Munich he is in charge of the lecture series for our fellows.
Juliane Lauks is the Scientific Manager for Statistical Learning & Data Science at the Department of Statistics, LMU Munich. At DSSGx Munich 2023, she coordinates our partnership with the Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML).
Max Lang is a student & teaching assistant at both scientific chairs contributing to DSSGx Munich at the Department of Statistics, LMU Munich. At DSSGx Munich 2023, he plans special activities for the fellows, including our annual Berlin trip.
Professor Frauke Kreuter holds the Chair of Statistics and Data Science at LMU Munich, Germany and at the University of Maryland, USA, she is Co-director of the Social Data Science Center (SoDa) and faculty member in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM). Together with Bernd Bischl she is the host of the DSSGx Munich Fellowship.
Bernd Bischl holds the chair of Statistical Learning and Data Science at the Department of Statistics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and is a co-director of the Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML), one of Germany’s national competence centers for ML. Together with Frauke Kreuter he is the host of the DSSGx Munich Fellowship.