USDA Document

Problem Statement

• Scenario: Newly-elected city council members are unfamiliar with past efforts to address local housing problems and have their own ideas about what to prioritize.

• issue: “Institutional knowledge” about local housing issues can be hard to build and maintain.

Chat Demonstration

Question Posted:

“What are some housing issues mentioned in the USDA Rural Development Summary of Program?”

Response

“The United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development offers various programs to support rural America, with a focus on housing services. The Rural Housing Service provides loans, grants, and loan guarantees for building or improving housing and community facilities in rural areas. This includes programs such as Single Family Housing, Multifamily Housing, and Rural Housing Site Loans. These initiatives aim to provide affordable housing options, improve living conditions, and support the development of rural communities. Source: https://www.rd.usda.gov/files/RD_ProgramMatrix.pdf”

Unstructured Data Model Flow

Model Performance

Strengths:

• The Chatbot provided a detailed explanation and elaboration

• The Chatbot has the ability to look through different types of unstructured documents (PDF, Word…)

• Ability to cite the data source where it retrieved the data from

• An improvement in the model’s ability to interpret human language

Weakness:

• Required complete contextual information for the model to understand user’s questions
• Slow response time
• Large amount of unstructured data is needed

Improvements

• Optimizing the model to identify and verify the data source

• Extend the searches on academic research literature to explore findings on how well various housing strategies work

Why Is it Important?

• Accessibility to the retrieve the right documents

• Improve efficiency of accessing housing documents