RAPID: Improving Transportation Equity to Enhance Food Security for Families Vulnerable to COVID-19

该COVID-19快速研究计划将调查并开始制定机制，以解决与COVID-19相关的缺乏获得粮食（即粮食不安全）以及导致粮食不安全的运输挑战的作用。这一大流行病暴露了我们社会在健康结果方面的一些根本不平等。由于缺乏智能手机和互联网接入，一些家庭无法获得食品配送服务。因此，这些家庭由于经常乘坐公共交通工具前往杂货店，因此暴露于病毒的风险更高。研究目标是解决地方一级和全国范围内的粮食不安全问题。该研究小组将为底特律市向弱势家庭提供学校午餐的试点项目提供研究和技术援助。在国家一级，该小组旨在确定受粮食和交通不安全影响最严重的地理区域和人群。研究结果将通过一个全国性的网站和数据库向公众公布，该网站和数据库收集了与COVID-19相关的粮食不安全缓解策略和最佳实践。该项目旨在通过将有关粮食安全的现有数据与人们何时、何地、如何和为什么旅行的信息联系起来，实现数据驱动的发现和实用见解。该团队将通过将食品安全指数和从互联网上标记的内容中抓取的相关信息整合到团队的交通公平开放知识网络（OKN）中来实现这一目标，该网络是在融合加速器第一阶段试点项目1936884下开发的。OKN允许存储的数据，它与其他数据的关系，以及与真实世界的对象和概念在语义层面上被理解。 这一整合将有助于制定和评估上述学校午餐供应方案，并确定因缺乏交通而最有可能出现粮食不安全的人和地方。该奖项由整合活动办公室的融合加速器项目颁发，与融合加速器A类项目相关：开放知识网络。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的支持影响审查标准。

This COVID-19 RAPID research program will investigate, and begin to develop mechanisms to address, the lack of access to food (i.e. food insecurity) associated with COVID-19 and the role of transportation challenges leading to food insecurity. The pandemic has exposed some of the underlying inequities in health outcomes in our society. The lack of smartphone and internet access has cut off some families from food delivery services. Consequently, these households are at higher risk of exposure to the virus due to more frequent trips to the grocery store, often by public transit. The research objectives address food insecurity at both the local level and nationwide. The research team will provide research and technical assistance to the City of Detroit’s pilot program to deliver school lunches to vulnerable families. At a national level, the team aims to identify the geographical areas and people most affected by both food and transportation insecurity. The research results will be made available to the public via a nationwide website and database that captures COVID-19 related food insecurity mitigation strategies and best practices.This project aims to enable data driven discovery and practical insights by linking the available data on food security with information about when, where, how, and why people travel. The team will accomplish this by ingesting the Food Security Index, and related information scraped from tagged content on the Internet, into the teams’ Transportation Equity Open Knowledge Network (OKN) developed under Convergence Accelerator Phase I Pilot project 1936884. The OKN allows stored data, its relationship to other data and to real-world objects and concepts to be understood at a semantic level. This integration will support the development and evaluation of the previously mentioned school lunch delivery program, as well as the identification of people and places most at risk of food insecurity due to a lack of access to transportation. The results are expected to contribute to the response to the current COVID-19 pandemic and any future outbreaks.This RAPID award is made by the Convergence Accelerator program in the Office of Integrative Activities and is associated with the Convergence Accelerator Track A: Open Knowledge Network.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.