The Michigan Data Science Team is excited to have partnered with Google and the University of Michigan-Flint to engineer a data platform and accompanying app as a part of our continued efforts to help the community of Flint. This app will provide users with information regarding key public services, such as the locations of water bottle distribution centers and instructions to request new water testing kits. Users will also be able to report concerns about the water quality at their location, and access our predictive model, which flags homes that are potentially at high risk of lead contamination.
Google.org is providing the University of Michigan-Flint a grant of $150,000 to build the platform and accompanying app. In addition, they are also providing access to several Google engineering consultants who will aid in producing interactive visualizations and oversee the app’s user interface design. MDST has created a multidisciplinary engineering team to oversee and manage the creation of our predictive model and data platform.
We will continue our efforts to ask and answer the data-related questions surrounding this crisis in order to provide as much value as we can to the people of Flint. We are incredibly grateful for the support from Google and for the chance to collaborate with our friends and fellow researchers at the University of Michigan-Flint campus.