Smart, Local, Resilient: Enabling Our Communities through Research Partnerships

As one of the foremost academic institutions on rural research, the University of North Dakota brings a number of unique social and health research opportunities to the academic community that have global impacts. The Midwest Big Data Hub (MBDH) incubates collaborative partnerships among industry, academic, government, and non-governmental organizations to drive economic development and capacity-building for data practices, policies, standards, and applications. The Hub’s Smart, Connected and Resilient Communities efforts aim at developing shared knowledge and practices around data and data science for our communities.

UND and the broader MBDH community are hosting a meeting on how data and data-related technology can affect rural communities and small municipalities. The goals of this workshop are to create an environment where the following can occur:

• Discussion of the current status of data-enabled rural and small cities’ research in the United States on a macro-level
• Showcase ongoing research for key rural health areas
• Develop deeper professional networks between researchers and communities attempting to address ongoing rural challenges
• Facilitate the discussion of issues unique to rural communities and how data can help with these issues (including access to Broadband)
• Bring together rural community leadership in government, non-profits, and foundations with academic researchers interested in rural communities to help guide productive inquiry
• Engage graduate student researchers with a broader community