This project was an awardee of the 2020 South Big Data Hub SEEDS Program - Southern Engagement and Enrichment in Data Science. It is one of three awards funded in the Seed Grant's small-range category of <$10,000. The PIs seek to study homeless data for the  State of Delaware and model demand for beds in the statewide hospital capacity in  response to COVID-19 data from Delaware.

OSN provides value to multiple disciplines, ranging from moving large astronomy datasets to compute resources to datasets geared towards strengthening machine learning research. Our users constitute a varied community of researchers and practitioners. The project is nationally coordinated effort led by the South Big Data Hub and supported by the Northeast, West, and Midwest Big Data Hubs

The vision of this project is that communities occupying low-lying coastal areas of the southern US will be protected and develop in a sustainable manner through planning based on knowledge, conservation, and wise use of sensitive lands. Researchers from the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science and the School of Geosciences at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi, along with Google Earth Engine are collaborating with the South Big Data Hub through this project to develop more accurate, ultra-high resolution topographic, land cover, and urban environment geospatial products. The project examines in detail areas that were directly impacted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in 2017, and identifies flood-prone areas across the region.

The project is a collaborative effort among the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, Tuskegee University, Spelman College, and West Virginia University to integrate and automate biological big data into student training and education. The project will offer training workshops, engage faculty and students in developing a protocol to automate field data collection, and will prototype automated methods to enhance plant digitization.

The long-term vision of the project is to help municipal leaders strengthen their ability to collect, use, and share data in a responsible manner. This will help grow privacy-preserving innovations across applications and geographic boundaries for the public good. In this way, the Smart Privacy for Smart Cities Spoke will serve to increase public knowledge, understanding, and engagement with privacy-related concerns, and ultimately, to promote the public’s trust in smart city technologies and in their local government.