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

粮食不安全是指无法持续可靠地获得营养食品。在休斯顿（德克萨斯州）地区，超过14%的哈里斯县家庭在COVID-19出现之前经历过粮食不安全。考虑到休斯顿已经经历了包括COVID-19、经济中断和系统性粮食不安全在内的多重灾难，目前尚不清楚下一次毁灭性天气事件袭击该地区时，该地区弱势群体的营养需求将如何得到满足。休斯顿食品银行（HFB）与1500多个合作伙伴合作，解决粮食不安全家庭的需求。2019冠状病毒病大流行使资金和人员严重紧张，同时推动需求大幅增加。HFB以一种特别的方式适应了过去的自然灾害，如飓风和洪水，并寻求通过纳入超越当前实践的战略来建立灾害复原力。迫切需要确定粮食不安全社区，了解他们在灾害期间的营养需求，并以保护隐私和尊严的方式提供营养和文化上适当的食物。如果不加以解决，这些问题可能会导致HFB有效、公平和高效分配食物的能力失败。通过社区驱动的方法，该项目将民间合作者与大学研究人员聚集在一起，使HFB的粮食分配战略保持一致，以应对多种灾害情况下的粮食不安全问题。推动这一方法的合作者包括与HFB相关的食品储藏室、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、联合劝募和基督教青年会。利用在第一阶段规划拨款期间与HFB及其合作伙伴举办的六次研讨会的经验教训，我们将共同采取一种以研究为中心的社会技术方法，开发和评估决策工具，其中包括选择粮食分配中心的公平指数，以提高粮食分配网络的弹性。我们的项目有以下目标：(1)制定流行病和极端天气事件期间粮食分配的个人和社区公平指标；(2)为食品银行网络设计网络组织弹性指标，并通过干预措施提高网络弹性；(3)开发并验证基础设施脆弱性预测工具；(4)开发并验证用于确定粮食分配中心位置及其粮食分配的决策工具。我们的团队致力于将研究成果转化为行动。所产生的决策工具将分发给美国各地其他易受灾害影响的食品银行，支持基于人工智能的食品分配优化技术的可转移应用。该项目是公民创新挑战赛的一部分，该挑战赛是由国家科学基金会、能源部汽车技术办公室、国土安全部科学技术局和联邦紧急事务管理局合作开展的。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

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.