Born more than four decades ago from the partnership of two international NGOs in Brussels, the Encyclopedia of World Problems has hand-picked and refined profiles of tens of thousands of problems occurring around the world: from notorious global issues all the way down to very specific and peculiar ones. This talk presents an overview of the Encyclopedia and the interesting data science applications that have arisen from the Encyclopedia's body of work - notably, its database resources.

1. The Encyclopedia of World
Problems and
Human Potential
Big Data Day L.A. | July 9th 2016
Christine Zhang
@christinezhang | @ewphp

2. “The one common experience of
all humanity is the challenge of
problems”
— R. Buckminster Fuller
architect, philosopher, creator of the geodesic
dome & 2nd president of MENSA
(1895 - 1983)

3. “The impossible project”
• In 1972, two international organizations, the Union
of International Associations (UIA) and Mankind
2000, decided to systematically document the
problems of the world

5. Early Editions (1976 - 1999)
• 1976: Yearbook of World Problems and Human
Potential
• 1986, 1991, 1994: more print editions
• 1996: first digital product (CD)
• 1999: Encyclopedia Online

7. Redevelopment (2013 - now)
• Encyclopedia of World Problems Has a Big One
of Its Own, Wall Street Journal 2012
• 2013: revamp of the encyclopedia due to the
persistence of UIA’s current Secretary-General

8. Major changes
• Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA): data freely
available and re-publishable
• Broader variety of sources
More information: https://prezi.com/salslqyur03w/ewp-news/

9. • Collective problem-solving as a collaborative,
crowd-sourced effort
• Apart from systematic identification of
recognized world problems, it can also map
the complexity of their interrelationships
“Wikify it” & more

16. Other types of relationships
• Reduction (one problem diminished by another)
• Hierarchy (one problem being broader or narrower
than another one)
• Relatedness
• etc.

17. What EWP is looking for
•Project partners (organizational and individual)
•Funding or in-kind support
•Suggestions or direct editing related to
•textual descriptions
•links between entries
•categorization
•new entries
•Communication
•Research

18. Additional info
• @ewphp
• @christinezhang
• http://www.uia.org/encyclopedia
• https://edit.ewphp.org/en/contact
• http://www.vacilando.org/article/re-
development-encyclopedia-world-problems

19. Your thoughts?