As part of our research into whether data trusts are a useful way of increasing access to data while retaining trust, we piloted three uses for them in the real world. Here is an overview of what happened when we applied the method to data about the illegal wildlife trade
During the first three months of 2019, the ODI worked in partnership with WILDLABS Tech Hub exploring whether a data trust – a legal structure that provides independent stewardship of data – could be of benefit to the vast array of data creators, data providers, data users and potential data reusers working to tackle the illegal wildlife trade (IWT) around the world.
WILDLABS Tech Hub suggested two use cases to us as areas where a data trust may have value. Use case one posed the question as to whether a data trust could be formed to assist with the sharing of image data in order to train recognition algorithms to assist border control officers with identification of illegal animals and animal products. Whilst use case two asked us to consider whether pictures taken by camera traps and acoustic sensor data can be shared to train algorithms to help create real time alerts.
This report seeks to explore data trusts in relation to the ODI and the Office for AI’s work on data trusts.
ODI Report: Exploring the potential for data trusts to help tackle the illegal wildlife trade
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