Dublin students use data science to tackle real-world housing challenge

College students from Dublin have been learning data science skills and putting them into practice to suggest policies that could support people facing homelessness.

The students, from Larkin Community College and St. Joseph’s, Fairview, used publicly-available short-term letting data to find out how much housing is available to rent across four areas – the city of Dublin, Dunleary, Fingal, and South Dublin.

They presented their findings at a recent showcase event, detailing how many people could be supported into housing from the €242 million of funding allocated by the Irish government to tackle homelessness.

Analytics and AI leader SAS sponsored the project, which is part of the global education initiative P-TECH, founded by IBM. It aims to equip young people with the academic, technical and professional skills required for 21st century jobs and ongoing education. It includes a number of partners from industry and education, as well as a school and two colleges.

As part of the five-week course, the students visited SAS’ Irish headquarters in Dublin, where they took part in a range of team building activities and learned how to use software such as SAS Visual Analytics and SAS Visual Statistics. They also developed their project management and presentation skills.

Jean de Villiers, Head of Analytics at SAS Ireland, said:

“As always, it was a pleasure to work with such inquisitive and talented students, who discovered how data can be used to devise solutions to real-world problems. In just a few weeks, the team learned valuable new data analytics skills that could help set them up for a future career in tech.

“Demand for use of data across every industry, including the appetite for artificial intelligence (AI), means that it’s critical to the economy and our society that the next generation have the opportunity to learn data literacy and analytics skills. The tech industry offers highly rewarding career pathways, and we want to open them up to as many people as possible.”

There is a major shortage of people with the data-related skills that businesses are looking for. SAS conducted a survey of decision makers from major firms in the UK & Ireland, with an average of 27,000 employees, which revealed that 44% of firms surveyed plan to invest in AI technology but 63% said their staff did not have the AI skills necessary and 61% did not have enough staff to deliver the benefits of AI. Compounding this problem, 53% of respondents were unsure what AI qualifications and skills were needed.

De Villiers added:

“Initiatives like P-Tech play a key role in ensuring that organisations have the capabilities they need to make the most of new technologies so they can innovate and grow – and we are pleased to be able to share our expertise through training.”

Alongside SAS and IBM, other P-Tech industry partners include Irish Life, Salesforce, Cisco, Virgin Media and Irish Water.

SAS offers a number of training courses aimed at people who want to gain or build on their data analytics skills.