Gear Lab is awarded a new research PRISE grant to enhance resilience in vulnerable communities through geospatial big data and AI. Congratulations!
The PRISE (Panther Research and Innovation for Scholarly Excellence) Program is initiated by PVAMU and Texas A&M to support 10 PVAMU-Texas A&M teams of faculty investigators to conduct collaborative research. This highly competitive program received 37 submissions this year and selected 10 teams for funding.
The project is led by Dr. Lei Zou from Texas A&M GEAR Lab and Dr. Thiagarajan Ramakrishnan from Prairie View A&M University College of Business. The objective is to bridge the digital divide in social media use during disasters, especially in vulnerable communities, through intelligently analyzing spatial-temporal patterns of disaster-related social media use. Using the two recent disasters (2017 Hurricane Harvey and 2021 Winter Storm Uri) as case studies, Gear Lab will develop AI-based algorithms for mining fine-grained location-based disaster information from social media. The knowledge gained from this study will shed valuable insights into strategies to reduce disaster impacts and build resilience for vulnerable communities. By the end of the project, Gear Lab will engage with identified vulnerable communities to organize informational workshops to promote efficient social media use during disasters.
More research findings from this project will be updated.
