Th 5:30-8:00pm
Location: The Tank – Lakeview 1160
POSC 363-0001
Hacking for Diplomacy
ENGR 498
Hacking for Diplomacy
MATH 485-0002
Special Topics: Hacking for Diplomacy & Data
Instructors
Cathy Copeland, John Hulsey, Kathleen Moore, and Kurt Paterson
In partnership with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and United Sikhs, teams of four students (from majors including computer science, engineering, international affairs, intelligence analysis, and political science) focused on the following problems:
- Megacities – When population surges occur, cities are left without a way to track the resulting informal settlements that emerge, making these types of population growth difficult to manage. This team developed a system with which such settlements may be mapped so that megacities can keep records of them as well as create a model of patterns city officials can use to see where future settlements may emerge.
- Sino-Indo Relations – Students worked in partnership with the NGA to develop a product that helps explain the present and future of the relationship between China and India’s relationship as it relates to the team’s primary research question: “How will the long-term trends of the investment, utilization, and control of water shape the future of the Sino-Indo strategic rivalry in the South Asian region, and what are the implications of these actions?”
- Team Croconile – This team was tasked with visualizing current and projected water abstractions—any structure that extracts water from surface or underground sources—along the Blue Nile River and analyzing their impacts on the Nile Basin region.
- Team United – Team United worked with United Sikhs to develop a comprehensive security strategy in order to adequately protect the Sikh population in Afghanistan that are often victims of terrorist attacks and religious persecution. This strategy included a combination of foreign policy, advocacy efforts, political engagement, and direct assistance to at-risk populations.
Students pursued solutions to achieve the following:
- Improve efficiency and effectiveness for decision-making by creating a Decision Forcing Exercise (DFE) that NATO will be able to implement at one of their training centers
- Innovate the NRCC’s current process for engaging with IS cadre members
- Analyze crowd behavior and create a proactive database on crowd psychology
- Find an alternative way for the National Guard CBRN unit to conduct radiation-specific cold weather decontamination.
- Create an application to synthesize and organize JPRA’s information on the edibility of various plants.
