While there is a growing recognition by agencies, organizations, and governments that data-driven decision making tools, like forecasting models, can offer significant improvements to the societies they are working to improve, there is not a cohesive body of research that offers guidance on how to best implement, understand, use, and evaluate forecasting methods for societal impact in practice. Furthermore, the research on forecasting for social good has been relatively slow and sporadic, both in academic publications and practical applications. The goal of this workshop is thus to improve the research and practice in issues related to forecasting for social good by: facilitating interactions between practitioners, researchers, and policy makers to develop a cohesive and sustainable network of international collaborations with a focus on issues related to forecasting for social good; promoting the development of new methodology and metrics to address the specific challenges related to forecasting for social good; providing professional development to policy makers; gaining a better understanding of the available data, challenges in data acquisition, and the uncertainty present in the data used to produce forecasts; and, addressing the ethical issues related to the use of forecasting methods for problems that impact society.

The F4SG has a special focus on facilitating the professional growth of early career faculty, postdocs, and students who will likely play a leading role in the field of forecasting for social good in the coming years.

For more information check out F4SG-IIF section and www.f4sg.org.