2021-22 "Data-driven Approaches to Trafficking Detection"

The Stanford King Center on Global Development’s Academic Year Part-Time Research Assistant Program connects King Center faculty affiliates and affiliated researchers with undergraduate and master's students committed to providing research support for up to 15 hours per week during fall, winter, and spring quarters. 

Students have the opportunity to engage in world-class research and have real-world impact. Undergraduate student research assistants earn $17.50 per hour and master's student research assistants earn $25 per hour. Research assistants can work a maximum of 15 hours per week.  Students must be enrolled full-time to participate.  

RESEARCH PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Human trafficking and modern slavery is one of the most pernicious problems in global supply chains. Labor trafficking networks in key industries are skilled at evading detection by hiding behind complex ownership structures, using illicit third-party recruitment practices, and concentrating victims in remote or temporary work sites at the most distal tiers of global supply chains. Despite the good-faith efforts of many governments and industry actors, the lack of systematic evidence about the functioning of trafficking markets, the effectiveness of strategies for reducing trafficking, or the evasion tactics used by perpetrators has severely limited intervention efficacy, leaving traffickers unchecked and exposing firms to unwanted reputational risk.   

Recognizing the need for new tools to better identify hidden networks of human traffickers and to disrupt their operations effectively, the Stanford Human Trafficking Data Lab is undertaking an ambitious research agenda aimed at developing new methodologies to understand trafficking networks and the determinants of human trafficking risk. The Human Trafficking Data Lab seeks a research assistant to work in close collaboration with the chief data officer at the Brazilian Federal Labor Prosecution Office and the Stanford-based research team to support two streams of research around building a decision support toll for anti-trafficking task forces and implementing AI to identify forced labor camps in the Brazilian Amazon. 

The research assistant will also work with the Human Trafficking Data Lab team to support the following projects:

Decision Support for Anti-Trafficking Task Forces

To assist anti-trafficking task forces in evaluating the accuracy and urgency of new reports of

trafficking (for example, “tips”), the team is developing a decision support tool for prosecutors and labor inspectors. This tool is fed by five ensemble components: a network model, a GIS spatial-temporal model, real-time natural language processing of incoming tips, predictive regression, and a ‘kitchen sink’ deep-learning model.

AI for Identification of Illegal Labor Camps

Using satellite imagery and artificial intelligence tools, the team is developing algorithms that can quickly identify transitory human trafficking camps, taking advantage of characteristic signatures of illegal labor camps used in deforestation and charcoal production to enable more timely intervention than previously possible.

Research mentor: Grant Miller (Professor, School of Medicine)

WHAT YOU WILL DO: 

The research assistant will work closely together and in collaboration with the research team to:

• Contextualize existing data from official reports of human trafficking from labor inspectors within the larger situational landscape in Brazil;
• provide basic data analysis;
• write up findings in a report; and
• support general data preparation.