SCC-PG: Developing Food Oases in the Urban Food Deserts with Smart Urban Grower Network

这项智能互联社区规划拨款旨在在城市种植者/生产者之间建立一个协作生态系统，并在这些农民与堪萨斯城服务不足的低收入社区之间建立桥梁。该规划项目将侧重于确定来自城市种植者和粮食沙漠社区的利益攸关方的需求和挑战，这些社区获得健康和负担得起的粮食的机会有限。除了这些主要利益相关者群体的参与外，该项目还涉及地球科学、计算机科学、社会科学以及运输和食品工程科学等多个学科。这种多学科、利益相关者驱动的方法旨在更好地了解种植者和服务不足社区的问题和议题，以制定基于科学的解决方案，解决与城市环境中粮食不安全问题相关的问题。该项目直接与NSF的使命保持一致，采用多学科科学和工程来解决粮食安全问题，以解决弱势、粮食不安全的城市人口的福利和健康问题。该项目将在堪萨斯城大都市区之外产生更广泛的社会影响，因为它旨在为美国其他城市社区创造一个可转移的模式。该项目的基础是开发一个安全的社会/信息平台，为城市种植者（食品生产者）和食品沙漠中的居民（消费者）提供服务，通过数据培养和动态整合交通、食品加工和食品不安全社区的数据，将他们融入城市社区。转型平台将建立在多学科数据分层和处理的基础上，包括：（1）物联网（IoT）传感网络层，其通过自动化实时数据收集和传播来构建用于具有成本效益的粮食生产的智能农场传感系统，（2）社会经济层，其评估对城市种植者和低收入居民的社会经济效益，（3）运输层，探索新兴的运输解决方案，如交付共享，微运输和无人机，以及（4）食品和营养层，为城市农民建立有关食品加工和保存技术的知识平台，以提高新鲜产品的保质期和安全性，以更好地满足弱势群体的营养需求。通过社区研讨会、实地培训、焦点小组会议以及与密苏里州推广大学、Cultivate KC和Antioch Urban Growers合作开展的调查，将为社区参与做出重大规划努力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Smart and Connected Communities planning grant aims to build a collaborative ecosystem among urban growers/producers and create bridges from these farmers to underserved low-income neighborhoods in Kansas City. This planning project will focus on identifying the needs and challenges of stakeholders from both urban growers and food desert communities who have limited access to healthy and affordable food. In addition to the involvement of these key stakeholder groups, the project involves multiple disciplines from the geosciences, computer sciences, social sciences, and the transportation and food engineering sciences. This multi-disciplinary, stakeholder driven approach seeks to better understand the problems and issues of grower and underserved communities in order to develop science-based solutions to address problems associated with food insecurity issues in urban environments. The project aligns directly with NSF’s mission by employing multi-disciplinary science and engineering to address food security issues to address the welfare and health of vulnerable, food insecure urban populations. This project will have significant broader societal impacts beyond the Kansas City metro area as it aims to create a transferable model for other urban communities across the United States. New findings and technical solutions will be widely disseminated to the broader stakeholder communities.The project has at its foundation the development of a secure social/informational platform serving both urban growers (food producers) and residents in food deserts (consumers), integrating them into a urban community through data cultivation and dynamic integration of data on transportation, food processing, and food insecure neighborhoods. The transformative platform will be built on a form of multi-disciplinary data layering and processing consisting of: (1) an Internet of Things (IoT) Sensing Network Layer that builds a smart farm sensing system for cost-effective food production via automated real-time data collection and dissemination, (2) Socioeconomic Layer that assesses socioeconomic benefits to urban growers and low-income residents, (3) Transportation Layer that explores fledgling transportation solutions such as delivery sharing, micro-transportation, and drones, and (4) Food and Nutrition Layer that builds knowledge platforms for urban farmers about food processing and preservation techniques to improve the shelf life and safety of fresh products to better meet the nutritional needs of vulnerable populations. A significant planning effort will be made for community engagement through neighborhood seminars, field training, focus group meetings, and survey development through partnerships with the University of Missouri Extension, Cultivate KC, and Antioch Urban Growers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.