I-Corps: Housing Recovery Platform

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is found in addressing disparities in recovery times between vulnerable and less-vulnerable populations. Disparities in recovery time are associated with disparities in health and wellbeing. Disparities are justice and equity issues that exist under ‘normal’ blue skies; these equity and justice issues not only persist but are likely to widen due to the impact of a storm and its aftermath. The Convergence, Inventory, Matching, and Assignment is a platform that supports the coordinated management of donated materials and volunteer labor in effort to speed the repair of damaged homes of displaced vulnerable households. There to be an appetite among recovery stakeholders for technical solutions that offer better coordination and tracking of the housing recovery. The solution responds to a pressing community need and the approach has been validated through community capacity building and engagement. This lends support to the commercial potential of this housing recovery platform. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a housing recovery platform that utilizes an innovative Optimization Scheduling Module. This module contains algorithms designed to more efficiently coordinate these resources so there is a global reduction in displacement times among displaced, vulnerable households. Thus, a reduction in disparities in displacement times and an associated improvements in population wellbeing. The algorithms in the module provide the decision calculus used to evaluate the vulnerability of displaced households, the damage state of impacted structures, and availabilities of materials and labor, and then schedule a sequencing of work packages. The module includes an optimization process to queue assigned work packages, update a calendar of scheduled work packages, and generate daily yard e-tickets. The order of placement on the calendar is dependent upon the prioritizations score. Using the prioritization score, the coordinating algorithm is optimizing the scheduling of the work packages to minimize the displacement times of vulnerable households. 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.