Scope

The rapid advances in information and communications technology experienced in the last two decades have produced an explosive growth in the amount of information collected, leading to the new big data era. Social and economic analysis is now challenged by the availability of novel large data and by the rapid advances of modelling techniques like those from machine learning. 

This special track at the GoodIT 2022 conference aims to bring together researchers, industry, and the community interested in leveraging alternative and unconventional data. Modern economies and societies produce massive datasets that need to be analysed using new modelling techniques. Given the increasing adoption of unconventional (big) data services and systems, this is a hot and timely topic for the research communities on social and economic analyses and studies. The exploration of such a large real-time amount of information produces new insights that are potentially useful for policymakers when nowcasting and forecasting economic and social indicators.

The “Unconventional Data for Good Socio-Economic Analysis” Special Track at GoodIT 2022 is organised by scientists of the Joint Research Centre (DG JRC) of the European Commission involved in the topics of this special track. The goal is to discuss recent advances in social and economic analysis using unconventional (big)  data and novel data science methodologies.

ORGANISERS:

Luca Barbaglia
Finance and Economy Unit
Joint Research Centre (DG JRC)
European Commission

Marco Colagrossi
Monitoring, Indicators & Impact Evaluation Unit 
Joint Research Centre (DG JRC)
European Commission

Sergio Consoli
Monitoring, Indicators & Impact Evaluation Unit
Joint Research Centre (DG JRC)
European Commission

Topics of interest 

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Novel and unconventional data sources for social and economic analysis; 
• Big data technologies for social monitoring, indicators and impact evaluation;
• Machine learning methods for prediction and understanding of the economy and society;
• Text mining and natural language processing to build unconventional social and economic indicators;
• Social and economic time series analysis and forecasting;
• Insights mining and business intelligence in social and economic services;
• Nowcasting and forecasting the economy and society during and after the pandemic.

We will accept both mature contributions and early high-quality results on these topics, as well as position papers illustrating innovative research directions.

Accepted papers will be included in the ACM Digital Library.

A post-event report with the roadmap of the involved research challenges is foreseen to be published within the Publication Office of the European Union.

The deadline for submission is on 06 June 2022. Please submit your paper through the Submission of Paper | GOODIT (cyprusconferences.org).

Papers formatting

• Papers should not exceed 11 single-column pages, including figures, tables, and references in standard ACM single-column format. Full papers are preferred but short contributions might be considered as well in exceptional cases. Papers must be submitted electronically in printable PDF form. Templates for the standard ACM format can be found here: https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template.
• If you are using LaTeX, please refer to the sample file “sample-sigconf.tex” after you download the .zip templates file and unzip it. Note that the document class “\documentclass[sigconf]{acmart}” should be used. No changes to margins, spacing, or font sizes are allowed from those specified by the style files. Papers violating the formatting guidelines will be returned without review.
• ACM has partnered with Overleaf, a free cloud-based, collaborative authoring tool, to provide an ACM LaTeX authoring template. The ACM LaTeX template on Overleaf platform is available to all ACM authors at: www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/acm-official
• GoodIT 2022 will follow the new workflow defined by the ACM called TAPS, so please read the instructions on the ACM page carefully. This new workflow allows to have a final document in both PDF and HTML5 accessible formats.

All submissions will be reviewed using a single-blind review process. The identity of referees will not be revealed to authors, but author can keep their names on the submitted papers, on figures, bibliography, etc.

Important dates

Submission deadline: 06 June 2022
Registration deadline: 20 June 2022
Camera-ready submission: 11 July 2022
Event dates: 7-9 September 2022

Program committee

Valentina Alberti, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Italy.

Andres Algaba, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.

Simone Angioni, University of Cagliary, Italy.

Luigi Asprino, University of Bologna, Italy.

Giulio Caperna, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Italy.

Paolo Fornaro, ETLA Economic Research, Finland.

Andrea Geraci, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Italy.

Ludovica Giua, University of Cagliary, Italy.

Alessandro Giuliani, University of Cagliary, Italy.

Paul Hofmarcher, Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, Austria.

Sebastiano Manzan, Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, US.

Gianluca Mazzarella, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Italy.

Misael Mongiovi', National Research Council (CNR), Italy.

Valentina Montalto, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Italy.

Andrea Nuzzolese, National Research Council (CNR), Italy.

Francesco Panella, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Italy.

Alessandro Sebastian Podda, University of Cagliary, Italy.

Diego Reforgiato Recupero, University of Cagliary, Italy.

Peter Reusens, National Bank of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium.

Luca Tiozzo Pezzoli, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Italy.

Songul Tolan, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Spain.

Elisa Tosetti, University Ca' Foscari of Venice, Italy.

About the organizers

• Luca Barbaglia works as a researcher at the European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) located in Ispra (Italy) where he is member of the Finance and Economy unit. Before joining the JRC in June 2018, he worked as a data science consultant. In 2017, Luca obtained his PhD in Applied Economics at KU Leuven (Belgium). He holds a research master in Econometrics from the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), and a bachelor in Economics and Social Sciences from Bocconi University. His main interests are time series analysis, large datasets and commodity markets.
• Marco Colagrossi is a Scientific Project Officer at the European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) located in Ispra (Italy), within the Competence Centre on Composite Indicators and Scoreboards (COIN) at the Monitoring, Indicators & Impact Evaluation Unit. He earned a M.Sc. in Economics from Tilburg University (UvT) and a Ph.D. at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (UCSC), Department of International Economics, Institutions and Development. Prior to joining the European Commission, he was a visiting researcher at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. His research interests and publications are in labor economics, political economy and microeconometrics methods.
• Sergio Consoli is a Scientific Project Officer at the European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) located in Ispra (Italy), within the Competence Centre on Composite Indicators and Scoreboards (COIN) at the Monitoring, Indicators & Impact Evaluation Unit. Previously Sergio was a Senior Scientist (2016-2018) within the Data Science department at Philips Research, Eindhoven (NL), focusing on advancing automated analytical methods used to extract new knowledge from data for HealthTech applications. He is author of several research publications in peer-reviewed international journals, granted EPO and WIPO patents, edited books, and leading conferences in the fields of his work.

Contacts

Luca Barbaglia
European Commission, Joint Research Centre (DG JRC) - luca.barbaglia@ec.europa.eu
Marco Colagrossi
European Commission, Joint Research Centre (DG JRC) - marco.colagrossi@ec.europa.eu
Sergio Consoli
European Commission, Joint Research Centre (DG JRC) - sergio.consoli@ec.europa.eu