Rolls-Royce has established an alliance of data analytics experts to help support global governments and businesses to recover from the economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. Named Emer2gent, the alliance will seek to combine traditional economic, business, travel, and retail data sets with behavioral data to provide new insights and practical applications to help people and organizations adjust to the new normal.
Initial members include:
- Truata: works with independently anonymized data that enables it to conduct privacy-enhanced analytics to drive business growth, uphold customer trust and protect brand reputation;
- Rolls-Royce and R2 Data Labs: applies advanced data analytics, industrial artificial intelligence, and machine learning to accelerate the development of new data insights, services and apps;
- IBM: will provide IBM Cloud Pak for Data, IBM public cloud and high-performance computing to the project, and IBM’s Data Science Elite team will provide its subject matter expertise as the data sets are brought together;
- ODI Leeds: a pioneer node of the Open Data Institute, it runs the Open Data Saves Lives program which explores the benefits data and open innovation can bring in health and social care; and,
- Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA) at the University of Leeds: the research center for applied data science brings together researchers from medicine, social science, business, and computing. The Institute will contribute secure data infrastructure, scientific expertise, and access to global academic research networks.
Anyone can take part in the Emer2gent challenges, including students and citizen data scientists. The alliance is voluntary and research results will be published for free. Potential members can register their interest at Emer2gent.org.
“People, businesses and governments around the world have changed the way they spend, move, communicate and travel because of Covid-19,” said Caroline Gorski, global director for R2 Data Labs, the Rolls-Royce data innovation catalyst which started the alliance. “We can use that insight, along with other data, to provide the basis for identifying what new insights and trends may emerge that signify the world’s adjustment to a new normal after the pandemic.”