SCC-RCN: Developing an Informational Infrastructure for Building Smart Regional Foodsheds

该项目的目标是建立一个跨学科研究协调网络(RCN)，将研究人员和社区利益相关者聚集在一起，为理解和优化食品系统建立一个通用的信息学框架。虽然粮食生产目前产生的卡路里足以养活世界人口，但粮食系统的不平等和失败导致了美国国内和世界各地的负面健康影响。缓解这些食物和营养不足有助于实现创建智能、互联和健康的可持续社区的目标。该项目的一个关键目标是允许社区成员(包括来自不同人群的成员)将他们的需求告知研究网络。它将通过以下三个综合目标实现这一目标：(1)提高对粮食系统中相互关联的组成部分和行为者的认识；(2)开发原型信息技术，以捕捉这些关系并实现信息共享和分析；(3)组织和协调美国两个主要农业区的粮食系统利益攸关方，以确定如何利用这些信息加强其区域粮食系统(下称“粮仓”)和其他社区的粮食系统。该项目的主要重点是加利福尼亚州萨克拉门托和俄亥俄州哥伦布地区的粮仓，随后努力将参与该网络的范围扩大到其他地区。通过该项目开展的研究将有助于解决研究人员、政策制定者和不同的粮食系统利益攸关方之间缺乏信息流的问题。开发新的方法将不同的数据流(气候、环境、遗传/基因组、产品组成、生产、进口、加工、分销、营销、食品政策、健康和保健)结合在一起，将使研究人员能够更好地描述食品系统的特征，使社区能够解决食品系统故障、不平等和其他挑战。这些活动将由一个由研究人员和社区成员组成的指导委员会协调，这些成员具有计算机科学、经济学、医学、食品科学、可持续农业、数据分析、工程、公共政策和公共卫生方面的专业知识。

The goal of this project is to build a transdisciplinary research coordination network (RCN) bringing together researchers and community stakeholders to build a general informatics framework for understanding and optimizing the food system. While food production currently generates enough calories to feed the world's population, disparities and failures in the food system lead to negative health effects within the U.S. and across the world. Mitigating these food and nutrition failures can help to meet the goal of creating smart, connected, and healthy sustainable communities. A key goal of this project is to allow community members (including those from diverse populations) to inform the research network of their needs. It will do so through work on three integrated objectives: (1) improve understanding of the interrelated components and actors in the food system; (2) developing prototype information technologies to capture these relationships and to enable information sharing and analysis; and (3) organizing and coordinating food system stakeholders in two key agricultural regions of the United States to determine ways this information can be used to strengthen their regional food systems (referred to hereafter as "foodsheds") and those of other communities. The primary focus of this project is on foodsheds in the Sacramento, California and Columbus, Ohio regions, with subsequent efforts to expand participation in the network to other regions.Research undertaken through this project will contribute to a addressing the problem of lack of information flow among researchers, policymakers, and diverse food system stakeholders. Developing novel methods for bringing together diverse data streams (climatic, environmental, genetic/genomic, product composition, production, importation, processing, distribution, marketing, food policy, health and healthcare) will allow researchers to better characterize the food system, enabling communities to address food system failures, inequities and other challenges. These activities will be coordinated by a steering committee of researchers and community members with expertise in computer science, economics, medicine, food science, sustainable agriculture, data analytics, engineering, public policy, and public health.