Grief to Action (G2A) is a collection of student-led initiatives that emerged from George Floyd’s murder in May 2020. G2A’s mission is to work on the issues of systemic marginalization with mindfulness as an incubator for student-driven, community-co-created data science for social justice (“DS4SJ”) projects. G2A supports community efforts against systemic racism by co-developing data products and connecting student learning opportunities across campus (capstones, working groups) to the scope/design/build/feedback process. With ⅓ of our members being not affiliated with Pitt, our main meetings on Friday at 12PM are open to all who are interested.
Current Working Groups:
Allegheny County Policing Project (ACPP)
- The Allegheny County Policing Project is a data platform to help citizens navigate hyper-fragmentation of policing in the county. Our tools consolidate information in easy-to-navigate ways for citizens, researchers, and activists interested in more police accountability in our county. ACPP publicly launched their police contract library in Fall 2021 and are still working on fine-tuning the project.
- For further information, here is a video explaining the ACPP project.
412Connect
- 412Connect completed two successful scavenger hunts - connecting over 300 students with 15 Black-owned businesses, community organizations, and other assets in marginalized communities. We thank our collaborators, Pitt’s Homewood CEC who recruited organizations for the Fall 2022 scavenger hunt and CMU Center for Shared Prosperity who rounded up our tech team with their Community-Based CS Fellowship.
- For further information about the initial launch, here is a video explaining the 412Connect project.
- The 412Connect project is taking on a second life! GSPIA Professor Kay Shimizu is reimagining the 412Connect platform as an experiential learning tool designed for classroom use. 412Connect will become an interactive platform for students to engage the public on how humanities and social science concepts from the classroom apply to the local community. Technical work on the platform has started!
- This working group is no longer accepting new volunteers.
Civic Data Helpdesk - Coming Soon!
- During the 2022-2023 academic year, CAASI tested ways to bring real-world civic data projects from the WPRDC into Pitt classrooms. This mutually beneficial experience inspired discussions for the creation of a civic data helpdesk that can leverage CAASI’s connection to a wide range of students and WPRDC’s technical knowledge, to assist Pittsburgh community members in their social justice efforts. More details to follow!
Past Working Groups:
- Affordable Housing (FA22-SP23)
-
This collaborative effort with the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center (WPRDC) is a new project at CAASI. This group is composed of three sub-projects: the Tangled Titles project (GSPIA’s PIA 2096 R Data Visualization capstone) which focuses on what happens to property ownership when the previous owner passes away, the Affordable Housing Watchlist project (with CMU’s Tech for Society), and the Landbank project (with GSPIA student Myles Cramer), where we will be researching whether revitalization of one blighted property has an impact on the surrounding area. Project manager Emmaline Rial is coordinating with WPRDC Director Bob Gradeck and Sara Fine Institute Director Dr. Nora Mattern is using this project as a case study for the DS4SJ Community Conversations project, which is developing best practices in developing data projects between grassroots organization and university student teams.