Excellence in Research: Human Centered Visual Analytics for Evidence Based Decision Making in Hunger Relief

粮食不安全的定义是不确定或有限地获得安全和有营养的食物，以过上积极健康的生活，这在美国是一个日益严重的问题。非营利性的饥饿救济组织，如食品银行，在向经历粮食不安全的人提供安全和有营养的食物方面发挥着重要作用。救济饥饿的行动依赖于基于证据的决定，它们缺乏以科学为基础、经过验证的工具和资源来帮助他们作出决定。该项目将数据分析的计算能力与人的因素结合起来，以改进影响粮食不安全和救济饥饿行动的循证决策。这个项目给社会带来了实实在在的好处。通过将分析能力和人类推理相结合的交互式可视化提供基于证据的决策的能力，将使食品银行能够更好地了解食品银行运营的方方面面，包括捐助者和伙伴机构的行为、需求和供应，从而使它们能够做出明智的决定，帮助有需要的人。该项目将使饥饿救济组织能够通过更有效地分配现有资源来满足更大的需求，从而影响人类生活。这一项目的性质有可能增加代表不足的少数族裔学生的参与，使他们更多地研究如何将工程学应用于具有社会效益的问题。该项目将侧重于改善饥饿救济组织与信息互动的方式，并开发一种以人为中心、考虑到人类认知局限性的系统方法，以提供可访问、可解释和易于实施的交互式视觉分析工具包，并为饥饿救济行动量身定做。该项目将极大地促进关于实物捐赠和粮食需求的数据分析和可视化的知识库，这是一个重要但未得到充分研究的专题。该项目将提供一个框架，说明如何在饥饿救济部门综合和可视化真正以人为中心的大数据，并改变这些组织与信息互动的方式，提高决策的效率和有效性。该项目由历史上的黑人学院和大学-本科生项目(HBCU-UP)共同资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Food insecurity defined as the uncertain or limited access to safe and nutritious food for an active, healthy life is a growing problem in the United States. Nonprofit hunger relief organizations, such as food banks, play a significant role in providing safe and nutritious food to people who experience food insecurity. Hunger relief operations rely on evidence based decisions and they lack scientifically-based validated tools and resources that can assist their decision making. This project integrates the computing power of data analytics with human factors to improve evidence based decision making that impacts food insecurity and hunger relief operations. This project has substantial benefits to society. The ability to provide evidence based decisions through interactive visualization that combines analytical power and human reasoning will empower food banks to have better understanding of all aspects of food bank operations including behaviors of donors and partner agencies, demand and supply, and therefore, allow them to make informed decisions to help the people in need. This project will enable hunger relief organizations to satisfy greater demand by more efficiently allocating available resources, thus impacting human life. The nature of this project has the potential to increase participation of underrepresented minority students to conduct research in the application of engineering to problems with societal benefit. This project will focus on improving the way hunger relief organizations interact with information and develop a systematic approach that is human centered and accounts for human cognitive limitations to provide interactive visual analytics toolkits that are accessible, interpretable, and readily implementable, and are tailored to hunger relief operations. This project will significantly contribute to the knowledge base with regard to data analytics and visualization of in-kind donations and food need, which is an important but understudied topic. This project will provide a framework for how big data can be synthesized and visualized that is truly human centered in the hunger relief sector and transform the way the operations of these organizations interact with information and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their decision making.This project is co-funded by the Historically Black Colleges and Universities-Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP).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.