Community on Multimodality: Participatory Action, Service, and Support (COMPASS)

Those in need of help often do not know how to locate or access service providers. Likewise, service-providing agencies often work in silos. The lack of communication also applies to volunteers; people do not know who to help and how they can be resourceful. Response becomes even more problematic when a problem demands the coordination of service providers, volunteers, and government structures, and after business hours, when the communication channels that can aid people in need become sparse. This project will (i) simplify the discovery and use of services, (ii) enable two-way communication between stakeholders (e.g., residents and service providers), (iii) deploy resources more efficiently, and (iv) assist stakeholders in assessing and promoting the wellbeing of their communities. The end result will be directly applicable to communities across the US, and has the potential to be influential beyond the human and physical services domain. It will advance computer science, electrical and computer engineering, and social and behavioral sciences to collectively address the challenges associated with this problem, and will create educational opportunities to encourage students to cross disciplinary boundaries. Women and underrepresented groups will be encouraged to participate in this project by collaborating with community-based organizations, and via programs at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY).

This multidisciplinary project takes a community-wide approach that will integrate people and data with analytics and engineering using social and behavioral sciences to maximize the efficiency of delivering human and physical services, and also improve the sense of connectedness of residents with service providers and government structures. The project will study the limitations of extant services, which will in turn inform the development of novel decision-making mechanisms with sufficient behavioral realism. The outcome will be an integrated "one-stop" service of services. This project will (i) develop new data mining methods for uncovering complex interdependencies within a dynamic sociotechnical system, (ii) devise novel information processing, machine learning, and control methods to dynamically optimize delivery of human and physical services under uncertainty with humans in the decision-making loop, and (iii) shed light on the ability of communities to integrate emerging technologies to become more connected in human interactions.

News

• (03/2021) Dr. Charalampos Chelmis and Dr. Daphney Zois are co-organizing a special session on Data Science for Smart & Connected Communities to be held at the 8th IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA 2021) in Porto, Portugal, October 6-9, 2021.

• (03/2021) Wenting Qi received a Student Scholarship award to attend The Web Conference 2021. Congratulations Wenting!

• (03/2021) One paper accepted at the Data Science for Social Good Workshop (DSSGW 2021) collocated with TheWebConf 2021

  • Challenges and Opportunities in Using Data Science for Homelessness Service Provision, C. Chelmis, W. Qi, W. Lee.

• (02/2021) Two papers accepted at the 2021 Complex Adaptive Systems Conference

  • Smart Homelessness Service Provision with Machine Learning, C. Chelmis, W. Qi, W. Lee, S. Duncan
  • Cyberinfrastructure for Social Good: Ensuring That No Homeless Individual Stays Behind, C. Chelmis, Y. K. Angajala

• (02/2021) One new student joins our team from the Deparment of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Welcome Teimur!

• (01/2021) Kirsten DiNicola is embarking on a six month exciting internship at Foster Kinship.

• (01/2021) One new student joins our team from the Deparment of Computer Science. Welcome Sadia!

• (01/2021) One paper accepted at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2021)

  • Optimum Feature Ordering for Dynamic Instance-wise Joint Feature Selection and Classification, Y. Liyanage, D.-S. Zois

• (01/2021) One paper accepted at the 25th Annual Conference on Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR 2021)

  • How Do People Navigate Information Online? A Comparative Study of Service Users and Service Providers, W. Lee, E. Lee

• (10/2020) One new student joins our team from the Deparment of Computer Science. Welcome Pranjal!

• (08/2020) Received supplemental funding of $29,160 from the National Science Foundation's INTERN program to provide PhD student Kirsten DiNicola non-academic research internship activities and training opportunities that will complement her academic research training.

• (08/2020) One paper accepted at the 2020 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers (ACSSC 2020)

  • Knowing When to Stop: Joint Heterogeneous Feature Selection and Classification, I. Nazar, D.-S. Zois, C. Chelmis

• (07/2020) Our team received the 2020 President’s Award for Exemplary Public Engagement.

• (07/2020) Our NSF project on making communities smarter and more connected is featured in the UAlbany NewsCenter.

• (07/2020) One paper accepted at the Journal of Technology in Human Services

  • Empirical Insights on Technology Use for Navigating Human Services, M. R. Abubakari, K. DiNicola, W. Lee

• (07/2020) One paper accepted at the Journal of Social Service Research

  • Coordination Networks among Local Human Service Organizations: Insights into Super-connectors and Barriers, W. Lee, C. Chelmis, K. DiNicola

• (06/2020) One paper accepted at the IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP 2020)

  • Sequential Heterogeneous Feature Selection for Multi-class Classification: Application in Government 2.0, I. Nazar, Y. Liyanage, D.-S. Zois, C. Chelmis

• (06/2020) One new student joins our team from the School of Social Welfare. Welcome Kelly!

• (06/2020) Yasitha Liyanage passed his doctoral candidacy exam. Congratulations Yasitha!

• (06/2020) Yasitha Liyanage is embarking on a three month exciting research internship at Amazon.

• (05/2020) Received supplemental funding of $331,320 from the National Science Foundation to promote closer collaboration with our community partners and facilitate transition-to-practice activities.

• (05/2020) Video of our technological solution is now live on YouTube. Enjoy!

• (04/2020) Preprint of our work available on arXiv

  • On-the-Fly Joint Feature Selection and Classification, Y. Liyanage, D.-S. Zois, C. Chelmis

• (04/2020) Yasitha Liyanage received an UAlbany GSA Grant Award to attend and present his work at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2020). Congratulations Yasitha!

• (04/2020) Dr. Daphney Zois gave a talk on AI for Social Good: Achieving Societal Outcomes through Interpretable Machine Learning as part of the Inaugural Lightning Talks on Artificial Intelligence series hosted by the University at Albany.

• (02/2020) Our project has been nominated for the 2020 President’s Award for Exemplary Public Engagement.

• (02/2020) Yasitha Liyanage received a National Science Foundation Student Travel Grant to attend and present his work at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2020). Congratulations Yasitha!

• (01/2020) Dr. Daphney Zois received an UAlbany Individual Development Award to co-organize and attend the first Symposium on Signal Processing and Machine Learning for Social Good to be held at the IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP 2019).

• (01/2020) Two new students join our team from the Department of Computer Science. Welcome Connor and Akshay!

• (01/2020) One paper accepted at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2020)

  • On-the-fly Feature Selection and Classification with Application to Civic Engagement Platforms, Y. Liyanage, D.-S. Zois, C. Chelmis

• (10/2019) Dr. Daphney Zois gave a talk on the topic of AI for Social Good: From Cyberbullying Detection to Improving the Delivery of Physical and Human Services at the Albany Academy for Girls High School in Albany, NY.

• (09/2019) Small-scale shadowing study in the Albany area has started.

• (08/2019) Explore our newly released dataset of civil issue reports and neighborhood characteristics.

• (08/2019) One poster accepted at the 2020 Annual Conference on Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR 2020)

  • Understanding Interorganizational Collaboration through Network Analyses, W. Lee, C. Chelmis, M. Yao

• (08/2019) Dr. Mohammed Rabiu Abubakari joins our team as a postdoc from the School of Social Welfare. Welcome Rabiu!

• (08/2019) One new student joins our team from the Department of Computer Science. Welcome Wenting!

• (08/2019) One new student joins our team from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Welcome Sachini!

• (08/2019) One paper accepted at the 2019 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers (ACSSC 2019)

  • Automated Optimal Online Civil Issue Classification using Multiple Feature Sets, I. Nazar, Y. Liyanage, D.-S. Zois, C. Chelmis

• (07/2019) Two papers accepted at the 2019 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2019)

  • Understanding Online Civic Engagement: A Multi-Neighborhood Study of SeeClickFix, C. Yong, C. Chelmis, W. Lee, D.-S. Zois
  • Web and Society: A First Look into the Network of Human Service Providers, C. Chelmis, M. Yao, W. Lee

• (07/2019) Dr. Charalampos Chelmis gave a talk on the topic of On-the-fly Feature Selection & Classification of High-dimensional Data at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

• (06/2019) Dr. Daphney Zois received an UAlbany Individual Development Award to attend and present her work at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2019).

• (04/2019) Dr. Daphney Zois gave a talk on the topic of Online Feature Selection for Real-Time Machine Learning at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Binghamton University, State University of New York.

• (04/2019) Co-organizing the first Symposium on Signal Processing and Machine Learning for Social Good to be held at the IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP 2019) in Ottawa, Canada, November 11-14, 2019.

• (04/2019) Dr. Daphney Zois presented the latest advances of our project at the annual NSF Smart and Connected Communities PI meeting, colocated with the Smart Cities Connect Conference & Expo.

• (02/2019) Surveys with members of the general public in the Albany area have started.

• (02/2019) One poster accepted at NetSci 2019

  • A First Look into the Network of Human Service Providers, C. Chelmis, M. Yao, W. Lee, D.-S. Zois, B. S. Jagini

• (02/2019) One paper accepted at the Data Science for Social Good Workshop (DSSGW 2019)

  • Creating Public Value by Democratizing the Ecosystem of Human Service Providers, C. Chelmis, M. Yao

• (02/2019) One paper accepted at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2019)

  • Automating the Classification of Urban Issue Reports: An Optimal Stopping Approach, Y. Liyanage, D.-S. Zois, C. Chelmis, M. Yao

• (01/2019) Two new students join our team from the School of Social Welfare. Welcome Emily and Kirsten!

• (10/2018) One abstract accepted at the 49th Annual Conference on Urban Affairs Association (UAA 2019)

  • Civic Participation through Online Platforms: Implications for Neighborhood Advocacy, W. Lee, C. Yong, C. Chelmis, D.-S. Zois

• (09/2018) One paper accepted at the 6th IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP 2018)

  • What matters the most? Optimal Quick Classification of Urban Issue Reports by Importance, Y. Liyanage, M. Yao, C. Yong, D.-S. Zois, C. Chelmis

• (09/2018) One poster accepted at the 2018 IEEE MIT Undergraduate Research Technology Conference (URTC 2018)

  • Is it a pothole or graffiti? The Ins and Outs of Participatory Urban Issue Monitoring, C. Yong, D.-S. Zois, C. Chelmis

• (08/2018) One new student joins our team from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Welcome Imara!

• (07/2018) One paper accepted at the 2018 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers (ACSSC 2018)

  • Improving Monitoring of Participatory Civil Issue Requests through Optimal Online Classification, D.-S. Zois, C. Yong, C. Chelmis, A. Kapodistria, W. Lee

• (07/2018) One abstract accepted at the 2018 INFORMS Annual Meeting (INFORMS 2018)

  • Making Non-Profit and Service-providing Agencies Smarter With Big Data, C. Chelmis, D.-S. Zois, W. Lee

• (06/2018) Six new students join our team from the School of Social Welfare. Welcome Sophia, Meghan, Gabe, Gretta, Eden, and Alissa!

• (06/2018) Catholic Charities joins our community partners to help us make communities smarter and more connected!

• (05/2018) Two new students join our team from the Department of Computer Science. Welcome Dhruvil, and Bhavik!

• (05/2018) Angeliki Kapodistria received an Initiatives for Women fellowship from the University at Albany for her work on our Smart and Connected Communities project. Congratulations Angeliki!

• (05/2018) Dr. Daphney Zois was recognized by the University at Albany for her work on our Smart and Connected Communities project during the 2018 Celebration of Scholarship event.

• (04/2018) Interviews with human services organizations in the Albany area have started.

• (04/2018) Christopher Yong presented his work on Building Smarter Communities with Data Science: Resolving Reported Issues in SeeClickFix at the 15th Annual University at Albany Undergraduate Research Conference.

• (04/2018) Christopher Yong received an Undergraduate Research Endowed Fellowship from the University at Albany for his work on our Smart and Connected Communities project. Congratulations Chris!

• (04/2018) Dr. Charalampos Chelmis received SUNY Faculty Research Award B Understanding Human Service–Seeking Trajectories from the University at Albany, 05/01/2018 – 04/30/2020.

• (03/2018) Dr. Daphney Zois and Dr. Wonhyung Lee presented the latest advances of our project at the annual NSF Smart and Connected Communities PI meeting, colocated with the Smart Cities Connect Conference & Expo.

• (02/2018) Dr. Wonhyung Lee gave an ADA lightning talk on the topic of Maximizing service delivery: integrating human behaviors, data analytics, and engineering.

• (02/2018) Our team is invited to serve in the Food Pantries Software Development Committee.

• (01/2018) Three new students join our team from the Department of Computer Science. Welcome Balaji, Chris, and Amir!

• (12/2017) Our project is featured in the UAlbany NewsCenter. Follow the link to learn how our research is going to make communities smarter and more connected!

• (09/2017) Our SCC project has officially started!