This National Science Foundation Project Grant of $1,399,989 awarded on October 1, 2021 will fund the development of artificial intelligence-based decision support tools to enable more equitable and resilient food distribution during pandemics and extreme weather events through March 31, 2024. The grant was awarded under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering program (CFDA #47.070), which supports research and education activities in all areas of computing, communications, and information science and engineering.
The University of Houston will lead the overall project to create AI models incorporating factors associated with food insecurity and distribution equity during disasters. Sub-awards totaling $150,000 were provided to the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Houston Food Bank to conduct quantitative research on food insecurity drivers and ensure stakeholder feedback and data integrity. An additional $100,000 sub-award to Vanderbilt University will support vulnerability analysis of critical infrastructure and development of a predictive tool to assess the risk of disruptions from hurricanes and floods on power and transportation systems.