Taylor Geospatial Institute (TGI) Geospatial Innovation for Food Security Challenge

Description

TGI's Geospatial Innovation for Food Security Challenge Co-Design Workshops Geospatial technologies, methods, and information can help build a food secure future, from finding new ways to decide where we grow crops as the climate changes, to generating innovative models for how organizations coordinate along supply chains, to helping people see the impacts of eating well every day. TGI is assembling an interdisciplinary community of researchers, innovators and implementers to work together to advance geospatial innovation and create a new future for the food system grounded in sustainability and food security.

TGI invites you to apply to join 3 in-person workshops by completing the form below. Selected applicants will collaborate with researchers and professionals from diverse organizations and backgrounds to co-design the Geospatial Innovation in Food Security Challenge.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Applications received before 25 October 2024 will be prioritized.

Workshop Information

Workshop participants will explore how current and emergent innovations in geospatial technologies and methods can be leveraged to promote food security, collaborating to identify sets of salient problems, assess their fit with technologies with potential to address them, and evaluate the potential impact of making progress on each problem. Following the workshops, TGI will open a call for proposals and fund teams presenting compelling geospatially-enabled approaches to addressing problems identified as priorities through the workshop process.

All three in-person workshops will be held at T-Rex in St. Louis, Missouri, a non-profit innovation and entrepreneur development center dedicated to strengthening the economic vitality of St. Louis. The collaborative working sections of each workshop will be in-person only. Formal presentations and panel discussions during the workshops will be recorded and shared.

Workshop participation is open to researchers at or above postdoctoral level and to anyone with relevant experience in industry, NGOs, government, not for profit or other 3rd sector organizations. Applicants can request to join one or more evens. Preference will be given to applicants who can commit to participate in all three events.

Workshops will take place on:

• November 13, 2024: Join the TGI team for a kickoff workshop in which participants will form teams and collaborate to identify broad sets of potentially interesting problems where current innovations in geospatial technologies and methods could be leveraged to improve future food security. Workshop activities include a keynote, panel discussion, and networking reception. Following the workshop, participating teams will have the opportunity to participate in virtual working sessions to refine their proposed set of problems.

• February 6, 2025: Support the community's ongoing idea generation work by engaging in this science speed-dating workshop. Designed to hone teams' thinking about the problems that are most important and addressable through geospatial innovation, this workshop takes another step toward defining the focus of the Challenge. After this workshop, teams will be supported to identify their top priorities and prepare to present them to the community and a panel of evaluators during the third workshop.

• April 17, 2025: Advocate for the problems which your team believes the community should focus on, as we wrap up the first phase of the Challenge's co-design process. During this workshop, teams will pitch their top problem to a panel of reviewers and provide peer feedback on other teams' proposals. The day will finish with networking to celebrate the group's work. These workshops are co-facilitated by a team from TGI, NASA Lifelines, and FutureThink.

For more information about the Challenge, visit www.taylorgeospatial.org/foodsecuritychallenge