SCC-CIVIC-FA Track B: Artificial-Intelligence-Based Decision Support for Equitable and Resilient Food Distribution during Pandemics and Extreme Weather Events

SCC-CIVIC-FA 轨道 B：基于人工智能的决策支持，在大流行和极端天气事件期间实现公平和有弹性的粮食分配

• 批准号: 2133352
• 负责人: Ioannis Kakadiaris
• 金额: $ 100万
• 依托单位: University of Houston
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-10-01 至 2025-03-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2133352&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SCC; CIVIC; FA; Track; Artificial

Food insecurity is the lack of consistent and reliable access to nutritious food. In the Houston (Texas) area, over 14% of Harris County households experienced food insecurity before the emergence of COVID-19. It is unclear how the nutritional needs of Houston’s vulnerable populations will be served when the next devastating weather event strikes the region, given that the city is already experiencing multiple disasters, including COVID-19, economic disruptions, and systemic food insecurity. The Houston Food Bank (HFB) collaborates with over 1,500 partners to address the needs of families experiencing food insecurity. The COVID-19 pandemic has stretched funding and personnel significantly while driving substantial increases in demand. HFB has adapted to past natural disasters, such as hurricanes and floods, in an ad hoc manner and seeks to build disaster resilience by incorporating strategies beyond current practices. The urgent needs are to identify food-insecure communities, understand their nutritional needs during disasters, and provide nutritious and culturally appropriate food in a manner that preserves privacy and dignity. Left unaddressed, these issues may create failures in HFB’s ability to distribute food effectively, equitably, and efficiently. Through a community-driven approach, this project brings together civic collaborators with university researchers to align HFB’s food distribution strategy to match food insecurity during multiple disaster profiles. Collaborators that have driven this approach include food pantries associated with HFB, local government, state government, other food banks, Foodbank Associations, workforce development and education, housing, health organizations, United Way, and YMCA. Leveraging lessons learned from six workshops conducted with HFB and its partners during our Stage 1 planning grant, we will jointly undertake a research-centered, socio-technical approach to develop and evaluate decision-making tools that incorporate equity indices for selecting food distribution hubs to improve the resilience of the food distribution network. Our project has the following objectives: (1) develop indicators of individual and community equity for food distribution during pandemics and extreme weather events; (2) design a network organizational resilience index for food bank networks and interventions to improve network resilience; (3) develop and validate a predictive tool for infrastructure vulnerability, and (4) develop and validate a decision-making tool for determining the locations of food distribution hubs and their food allocation. Our team is focused on turning research into action. The decision-making tools produced will be disseminated to other disaster-vulnerable food banks throughout the United States, supporting transferable applications of AI-based techniques for food distribution optimization.This project is part of the CIVIC Innovation Challenge which is a collaboration of NSF, Department of Energy Vehicle Technology Office, Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate and Federal Emergency Management Agency.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.

粮食不安全是缺乏一致且可靠地获得营养食品。在休斯敦（德克萨斯州）地区，超过14％的哈里斯县家庭经历了粮食不安全，在COVID-19出现之前。尚不清楚休斯顿脆弱人群的营养需求如何在下一个毁灭性的天气事件袭击该地区，因为该市已经遇到了多种灾难，包括Covid-19，经济破坏，系统性的粮食不安全。休斯顿食品银行（HFB）与1,500多个合作伙伴合作，以满足经历粮食不安全感的家庭的需求。共同19-19大流行已经大大扩展了资金和人员，同时驱动了大幅度的需求增长。 HFB以临时的方式适应了过去的自然灾害，例如飓风和地板，并试图通过提高策略以外的策略来建立灾难的抵御能力。迫切的需求是确定粮食不确定性社区，了解灾难期间的营养需求，并以维护隐私和尊严的方式提供营养和文化适当的食物。剩下的，这些问题可能会导致HFB有效，平等和有效分发食物的能力。通过社区驱动的方法，该项目将公民合作者与大学研究人员汇总在一起，以使HFB的食品分销策略保持一致，以匹配多个灾难概况中的粮食不安全。推动这种方法的合作者包括与HFB，地方政府，州政府，其他食品银行，食品银行协会，劳动力发展和教育，住房，卫生组织，联合之路和基督教青年会相关的食品储藏室。利用从HFB及其合作伙伴进行的六个研讨会中汲取的经验教训，我们将共同采用以研究为中心的社会技术方法，以开发和评估决策工具，其中包含用于选择食品分配枢纽的公平指数，以提高食品分配网络的弹性。我们的项目具有以下目标：（1）在大流行和极端天气事件期间开发个人和社区公平的指标； （2）为食品银行网络和干预措施设计网络组织弹性指数，以提高网络弹性； （3）开发和验证基础设施脆弱性的预测工具，（4）开发和验证一个决策工具，用于确定食品分配中心的位置及其食品分配。我们的团队专注于将研究变成行动。生产的决策工具将被分解为美国各地的其他可造成的可造成的食品银行，支持基于AI的基于AI的技术进行食品分配优化的技术。该项目是NSF的公民创新挑战的一部分，该项目是NSF的合作，是能源车辆技术办公室的合作，国土安全部和联邦技术局和联邦紧急情况销量。利用基金会的知识分子和更广泛的影响审查标准。