Data Science for Public Good 2024

Introduction

This Quarto website is an experimental page hosting project documentation for the 2024 Data Science for Public Good program at Iowa State University. The Project Blogs tab contains the documentation for each team’s work on a regular basis. The Student Blogs tab contains the blog posts of all individual participants in DSPG for the summer of 2024.

To learn more about the program, follow the link to the Iowa State University DSPG Program.

Projects

Iowa Zoning Guide: An Inventory Analysis of Iowa’s Communities

The Iowa Zoning Guide project is a comprehensive, interactive mapping effort that will display housing-related zoning regulations by district for 327 Iowa cities. The project will collect and analyze data on several socioeconomic factors influencing housing in these cities. Our website developers will then use the data to build the Online Guide to Iowa Zoning map, providing comprehensive insight into the factors affecting the production and preservation of housing across Iowa.

Project Sponsor: Iowa Economic Development Authority
Project Advisers: Jay Maxwell, Chris Seeger
Graduate Fellows: Tabassum Zaman
Undergraduate Scholars: Joseph Betti, Blake Underwood, Naomi Mauss
Final Presentation Video: Youtube Recording

Healthy Community Capitals

The Community Capitals project seeks to explore the relationship between community capital indicators and the overall condition of communities in Iowa, aiming to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and gaps within these communities. The main work focuses on major events such as natural disasters, job losses, new job creation, school closures, and new opportunities for tourism and healthcare. The study seeks to identify the most relevant community capitals, trends over time, and the impact on community resiliency, by analyzing correlations between various indicators and comparing quantitative data with some qualitative insights.

Project Sponsor: ISU Community and Economic Development
Project Advisers: Matthew Voss
Graduate Fellows: Solomon Eshun
Undergraduate Scholars: Manjul Balayar, Lily Christenson, Nhat Anh Le
Final Presentation Video: Youtube Recording

AI for Community and Housing Development

The Housing and AI project is working on building a tool to help bring Artificial intelligence to housing and community development. The goal is to make the most up-to-date data available and easily accessible for housing and communities to make better-informed decisions. The tool makes use of a large language model to help answer different questions about housing and community problems, backed by the data. The tool could potentially help various roles like community planners, builders, and the policymakers involved in housing and community development.

Project Sponsor: AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture (AIIRA)
Project Advisers: Liesl Eathington, Rakesh Shah
Graduate Fellows: Karthik Hanumanthaiah
Undergraduate Scholars: Neha Tirunagiri, Cael Leistikow, Alister Gan
Final Presentation Video: Youtube Recording