Addressing Societal Challenges through Analytics: An ESG ICE Framework and Research Agenda

There is both a need and an opportunity to develop analytics-driven approaches to address many significant challenges facing society. Toward this end, this article presents an “ESG-ICE” framework that builds on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) perspectives by considering their interactions with desirable outcomes such as individual well-being, community welfare, and economic resilience (ICE). We then provide exemplars of research problems in energy, mobility, and health that can be positioned and understood through this lens so that they can be solved through analytics. Recognizing that addressing societal challenges through analytics presents unique methodological challenges, we highlight specific opportunities that emerge for the design of (1) new cyberphysical infrastructures, (2) smart markets and decision support systems, (3) hybrid predictive, prescriptive, and causal approaches, and (4) mechanisms that facilitate data sharing.