« Predicting food security using secondary data, and a reflection on the links of food and migration.»

To join the online seminar, presented by Prof Francesca Panero from Sapienza University of Rome and Dr Emma Kopp from Paris Dauphine University, please use this link: https://meet.google.com/mwd-rcdy-sun 

The talk will start with an introduction on the problem of estimation of food security levels. Usually, governments and international organisations run surveys to estimate food security, but this is an extremely expensive and sometimes dangerous activity. To complement these surveys, we will walk with you through the pros and cons of estimating such measures using machine learning and statistical methods trained on secondary data such as economical, demographical, environmental and conflict data. We will compare the outputs of Gaussian processes, XGBoost and neural networks to forecast regional levels of food security over African countries. We will conclude with a reflection on how research on food security could be linked to the study of dynamicsin migrations.