SSA ACT invites everyone to attend its September Branch Meeting, where Edward Kang from the Australian Passport Office will be enlightening us with the details of the models they used to forecast passport demand.

Details of the talk and its Zoom link are given below. 

Date: Tuesday 24 September 2024 

Time: Starts 5:45pm and finishes by 7pm    

Speaker:  Edward Kang (Australian Passport Office)

Venue: Superfloor, Level 6, Marie Reay Teaching Centre, Australian National University (MRTC ANU),  or via Zoom,  or via Zoom with details below.

Topic: Forecasting demand for Australian passports – the official model developed wholly within Australian Passport Office

Abstract: Prediction of human behaviour in the ‘real world’ is often challenging, as there is a plethora of factors that influence people and some of them occur completely randomly. This challenge is exacerbated when the same factor in the same environment can have different degrees of impacts on different individuals. However, this challenge becomes more manageable when you discover the underlying driver in their behaviour which you can convert to quantitative predictor variables. At the Australian Passport Office, we have analysed data collected over two decades to identify the right attributes to forecast passport demand, and we have used a traditional machine learning technique, random forest, to produce forecast models that were proven to show high accuracy even during and after the COVID-19.

Biography: Edward Kang is the current author of the official forecast model for Australian passports demand. Edward has over 15 years of hands-on experience in the data science and advanced analytics roles. Some of his achievements include: 

• Australia’s first ML-based air passenger screening model piloted at the Department of Immigration and Citizenship,
• Australia’s first ML-based sea cargo screening model deployed at the Australian Customs and Border Protection Services and 
• The first ML-based individualised marketing offer model at Vodacom, Democratic Republic of Congo. 

All of the above examples have significantly improved the targeted business outcome and advanced the organisations ahead of their game at the time.

Edward has also worked with other large corporate enterprises in telecommunication and energy industries in Australia and is now a Lead Data Scientist at the Australian Passport Office.

Catering: To assist in catering, please let me know if you are attending in person by 5pm Monday 23 September by entering your details at attendance sheet, or contacting me (warren.muller@csiro.au; 0407 916 868). Please regard this as a firm commitment, not just an intention. For withdrawals after the deadline, please remove your name from the sheet and phone or text me (0407 916 868).

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Topic: SSA Canberra branch meeting
Time: Sep 24, 2024 05:45 PM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney

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