Prasun Shrestha, AI/ML Data Scientist, Hala Systems

Saving Lives with Data Science

In the movies, heroes get one perfect piece of information that saves the day. It could be an airstrike headed toward a school, or the evidence the war crimes tribunal needs to convict the bad guy. Prasun Shrestha (HNZ 2021) uses technology to make those plot twists real, saving lives and combatting war crimes.

Prasun and his colleagues create open-source intelligence systems for humanitarian causes at the social enterprise company Hala Systems. By developing remote sensing and alerting systems powered by AI and Internet of Things, their systems uncover actionable intelligence to protect what matters.

“I am a data scientist, so I build the algorithms that we deploy,” Prasun says. “There’s a tremendous amount of value if we can get the right information to the right people at the right time.”

For example, one of Hala Systems’ earliest innovations was Sentry, a civilian-airstrike early-warning system that collected observational and historical flight data to give people in Northwest Syria advanced notice of incoming airstrikes. This data also provided clear evidence of war crimes violations that is helping governments, investigative journalists, NGOs and the United Nations hold perpetrators accountable.

In addition to addressing conflict zones, future projects include the development of intelligent systems for the detection and classification of events such as natural disasters, industrial accidents and population displacement. All solutions rely on pulling the “right information” from public or commercial information streams such as posts on social media, radio broadcasts, human reporting, satellite imagery or sensors. The trick is deploying AI to find, contextualize and summarize that information. It’s a needle-in-haystack challenge that Prasun relishes solving.

“This is a space traditionally driven by advocacy, but now we are leveraging state-of-the-art technology and intelligence to bring many positive changes to the world’s most delicate places,” he says. “A few minutes can change or save lives. I think it’s beautiful to see how this technology advances humanity.”

Story by Elizabeth Speed