World Models¶

“All models are wrong, but some are useful.” -George Box

Models are approximations of reality that help us answer questions. At Kimetrica, our goal is to help people make better decisions about international development and humanitarian assistance. Our models serve this end by answering the questions that are most relevant for these decisions.

There are two distinct types of modeling capabilities that we pursue at Kimetrica: domain modeling and intervention modeling.

Domain models are issue specific and aim to predict a development indicator using contextually significant and statistically meaningful data. Domain models answer questions like:

• What can we expect the value of this indicator to be, given these other datasets?

• How can we expect this development indicator to change in the future?

Intervention models are action oriented and aim to predict the costs and effects of different interventions across development indicators. Intervention models answer questions like:

• What will this intervention cost?

• What will the effect of intervention X be on development indicator Y?

• What is the optimal use of my resources to maximize/minimize development indicator Y?