Visualizing the impact of climate change and other shocks to Boston’s food system

How stable and just is Boston’s food system? What does it look like, in size and complexity?

On the weekend of November 10th and 11, Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media and Design and the Global Resilience Institute will host “Sourcing Boston,” a hackathon where participants will explore data – from economic to environmental science to urban planning – to tell compelling stories and draw insights about food insecurity, economic disruption and resilience.

In partnership with Thomson Reuters Labs and RStudio, this event will challenge participants to leverage data, analytics and visualization to find new ways of telling stories and deriving insights about how climate change and other shocks can disrupt food systems, supply chains and basic infrastructure in Boston.

Who can sign up and who will be there?

The event is open to both students from Northeastern and greater Boston, as well as professionals from any field. It will be kicked off with lightning talks on resilience data, and visualizing and communicating risk.

What kind of stories are we looking for?

– Identify current food deserts and predict where new ones might be emerging in Boston
– Visualize the web of food imports by land, sea or air into New England
– Design a contingency plan for food and other supplies in a post-disaster Boston
– Integrate social media and government data to paint a picture of food insecurity in the region
– Analyze Boston’s food infrastructure to predict where it might fail first in the event of a disaster

More information and data sets on our github page.

With generous support from Thomson Reuters Labs, Project Bread, Red Tomato, RStudio, TBC Analytics.