Speck&Tech 88 "AI in humanitarian action"

Hey there! 👋

Speck&Tech is the digital community of Trentino, which, since 2016 - over a beer and a slice of speck - has brought together developers, data scientists, researchers, designers and, more broadly, people passionate about technology. In the last 10 years, it has organized more than a hundred free events, open to everyone, with a simple and effective format: a couple of talks centered around a different theme each time.

AI is moving into places where the stakes are much higher than productivity and automation. In humanitarian settings, AI can help organizations reach people forced to flee, improve access to services, and support complex operational decisions. But when technology enters such environments, new questions emerge: what happens when an AI system is wrong, biased, or simply cannot explain its decisions?

Join us for an evening with Breno Valentini, Associate Innovation Officer at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and Piero Ronzani, behavioral and development economist. Together, they will explore the opportunities and challenges that arise when technology meets humanitarian action, from emerging applications to the issues of fairness, transparency, and misinformation. Welcome to "AI in Humanitarian Action"!

This event will be fully in English 🇬🇧 Access to the venue is reserved for those with a valid ticket, which will be scanned at the entrance of Impact Hub Trentino. If you can’t join us in person, follow the live stream here.

This evening also marks the opening of a broader three-day event organized by the University of Trento, involving the Departments of Sociology and Social Research and Information Engineering and Computer Science, in collaboration with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Starting on Thursday, October 1, University of Trento students will take part in an intensive 48-hour hackathon, working in multidisciplinary teams on real-world data challenges related to refugee inclusion and humanitarian action.

Please find below our amazing speakers for the night:

1. BRENO ELIAS VALENTINI
🇬🇧 From responsible AI to humanitarian impact: designing digital solutions for refugee response

ABSTRACT: As humanitarian crises grow in scale and complexity, organizations like UNHCR increasingly rely on data, digital technologies, and artificial intelligence to support refugee response. But what does it actually mean to use AI in humanitarian operations, and what are the opportunities and risks involved? Drawing on real UNHCR projects, this session will explore how data and AI are being applied to address operational challenges, improve decision-making, and support affected populations. Through practical examples and lessons learned, participants will gain insight into the technical, ethical, and operational considerations of deploying AI in humanitarian settings, where innovation must be balanced with accountability, transparency, and human impact.

BIO: Breno Valentini is an Associate Innovation Officer at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, where he manages and supports digital innovation projects through the Digital Innovation Fund. Based in Bologna, Italy, he works at the intersection of humanitarian action, product innovation, and digital transformation, helping design and scale solutions for displaced communities worldwide. He holds a Master's degree in Organizational Innovation and Entrepreneurship from Copenhagen Business School, where he specialized in innovation, human-centered research, and organizational change.

2. PIERO RONZANI
🇬🇧 Data at work for vulnerable lives

ABSTRACT: What does AI adoption look like in a bustling market in the Global South? How are new technologies and richer datasets expanding our potential to study and support vulnerable populations around the globe? And what are the challenges of this new era? I will touch on these and more, covering stories from my research in the humanitarian sector. I will start in Gaza and the West Bank where, by linking geocoded conflict-event data with mental health screenings, we were able to show just how closely violence tracks with depression, and put a number on the economic toll it takes on an already fragile population. From there I will move to Jordan, where we built a Climate Vulnerability Index to help identify which refugee households are most exposed to climate shocks and least equipped to cope with them. I will then close in rural Kenya, with an ongoing project where large language models are helping us listen to and decode local radio broadcasts at scale, turning an entirely new kind of data into a tool for tracking how misinformation actually spreads through communities.

BIO: Piero Ronzani is a behavioral and development economist working at the intersection of conflict, information, and vulnerability. He is a postdoctoral researcher at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan, a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and a research affiliate at the International Security and Development Center (ISDC) in Berlin. He runs social experiments and analyzes large-scale survey data to understand how people make decisions under pressure, how communities recover from conflict and crisis, and how misinformation spreads - with fieldwork spanning the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.

Impact Hub Trento is a coworking space where individuals and companies can work, grow, innovate, and connect. Impact Hub Trento offers flexible workstations, modern meeting rooms, and a dynamic community. Did you enjoy the environment, and are you part of the Speck&Tech community? Here’s an exclusive discount on your next Flex Membership!

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