Artificial intelligence-enhanced decision support for informing global sustainable development: A human-centric AI-Thinking approach

Authors

Meng-Leong HOW, National Institute of Education
Sin Mei CHEAH, Singapore Management UniversityFollow
Yong-Jiet CHAN, Monash University
Aik Cheow KHOR, Monash University
Eunice Mei Ping SAY, National Institute of Education

Publication Type

Journal Article

Book Title/Conference/Journal

Information

Year

1-2020

Abstract

Sustainable development is crucial to humanity. Utilization of primary socio-environmental data for analysis is essential for informing decision making by policy makers about sustainability in development. Artificial intelligence (AI)-based approaches are useful for analyzing data. However, it was not easy for people who are not trained in computer science to use AI. The significance and novelty of this paper is that it shows how the use of AI can be democratized via a user-friendly human-centric probabilistic reasoning approach. Using this approach, analysts who are not computer scientists can also use AI to analyze sustainability-related EPI data. Further, this human-centric probabilistic reasoning approach can also be used as cognitive scaffolding to educe AI-Thinking in the analysts to ask more questions and provide decision making support to inform policy making in sustainable development. This paper uses the 2018 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) data from 180 countries which includes performance indicators covering environmental health and ecosystem vitality. AI-based predictive modeling techniques are applied on 2018 EPI data to reveal the hidden tensions between the two fundamental dimensions of sustainable development: (1) environmental health; which improves with economic growth and increasing affluence; and (2) ecosystem vitality, which worsens due to industrialization and urbanization.

Keywords

artificial intelligence, decision making support, sustainability, environmental performance index, Bayesian, predictive modeling, human-centric, human-in-the-loop, AI-Thinking, explainable-AI, AI for good

Disciplines

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics | Environmental Policy | Environmental Studies | Place and Environment

ISSN/ISBN

2078-2489

Publisher

MDPI

DOI

10.3390/info11010039

Version

publishedVersion

Language

eng

Copyright Holder

Authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Format

application/PDF

Citation

HOW, Meng-Leong; CHEAH, Sin Mei; CHAN, Yong-Jiet; KHOR, Aik Cheow; and SAY, Eunice Mei Ping. Artificial intelligence-enhanced decision support for informing global sustainable development: A human-centric AI-Thinking approach. (2020). Information. 11893, (1), 1-24.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cmp_research/22

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.3390/info11010039