Ideas change everything

How we'll predict the next refugee crisis

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Rana Novack |

TED@IBM

• December 2017

"When it comes to refugees, we're improvising," Rana Novack says. The daughter of Syrian immigrants, Rana believes that if we applied predictive analytics, government agencies and humanitarian aid organizations would be better equipped to manage future crises. Using this technology, Rana developed a prototype that will be deployed with a refugee organization in Denmark. "We have to make sure that the people who want to do the right thing, who want to help, have the tools and the information they need to succeed," she says, "and those who don't act can no longer hide behind the excuse they didn't know it was coming."

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"When it comes to refugees, we're improvising," Rana Novack says. The daughter of Syrian immigrants, Rana believes that if we applied predictive analytics, government agencies and humanitarian aid organizations would be better equipped to manage future crises. Using this technology, Rana developed a prototype that will be deployed with a refugee organization in Denmark. "We have to make sure that the people who want to do the right thing, who want to help, have the tools and the information they need to succeed," she says, "and those who don't act can no longer hide behind the excuse they didn't know it was coming."

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

About the speaker

Rana Novack

Refugee advocate

Rana is a Syrian American advocate for refugees and civilians in conflict, and the solution owner of IBM’s Refugee & Migration Predictive Analytics Solution -- a first-of-a-kind solution, leveraging machine learning and cognitive computing to enable Government agencies and humanitarian aid organizations to better manage refugee and migration crises. She’s been published in the Wall Street Journal, WIRED magazine, and her work has been cited by Yale University and the Foreign Policy Initiative.

About TED Institute

Every year, TED works with a group of select companies and foundations to identify internal ideators, inventors, connectors, and creators. Drawing on the same rigorous regimen that has prepared speakers for the TED main stage, TED Institute works closely with each partner, overseeing curation and providing intensive one-on-one talk development to sharpen and fine tune ideas. The culmination is an event produced, recorded, and hosted by TED, generating a growing library of valuable TED Talks that can spur innovation and transform organizations.

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