Anti-Trafficking Interventions in the Amazon, by Ben Seiler, Stanford University

Anti-Trafficking Interventions in the Amazon, by Ben Seiler, Stanford University, Monday November 11, 1:00 – 1:50pm, North Science Building 015, Wachenheim, Statistics Colloquium

An estimated 50 million people live in modern slavery.  Historically, research into understanding and combating this problem has been hampered in part because of the paucity of reliable and timely data.  In this talk, we will discuss ongoing collaborative work between Stanford’s Human Trafficking Data Lab and Brazil’s Federal Labor Prosecution Office to augment the existing human-led anti-trafficking efforts through the development of quantitative tools and process improvements.  In particular, we will focus on the development and deployment of a satellite-based detection system for identifying locations using forced labor for illegal charcoal production.  We will highlight some of the practical and statistical difficulties surrounding deploying and rigorously evaluating large-scale interventions in real-world, multi-stakeholder settings.