Navigating to nourishment: Technology for food equity
summary
Helpline evolves from phone calls to SMS to a Mapbox map that couples a weighted recommendation model with live travel times, using Mapbox Directions API durations and four signals: data confidence, next-open time, client experience and distance (distance gets 5x weight, later replaced by travel time). Daily re-runs trigger bell alerts when top-three choices change. Features include schedule, reminders, activity feed, image-backed feedback; two developers scale to serve 12,000 people daily with 14,229 users recorded.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (16)
- 0:00Introduction and setup
- 1:23Food equity mission explained
- 3:52From phone calls to text messages
- 6:01Why maps matter for food access
- 8:29Smart recommendations concept
- 10:35Building smart food pantry maps
- 13:22Travel time over distance
- 15:32Daily algorithm updates
- 16:34Additional Lemon Tree features
- 17:37Scaling impact and growth
- 18:20Q&A begins
- 19:02Data accuracy and sources
- 21:11Future killer features
- 22:15Feedback to food pantries
- 24:01Product development process
- 25:04Closing and thanks
related talks
28m"Where, When, Why, and How: Directi
06mFoundations for Systematic Evaluation and Benchmarking of a Mobile Food Logger in a Large-scale ...
05mUnlocking Real-Time Data
06mCrisis Communication 2.0 - Real-time Civilian Protection
24m"Are Geospatial Tools Supposed To Bring Us Closer To Place?"
49mLet's Make Maps Widely Accessible
05mCrisis Mapping
15mThe turf wars on data - can be a matter of life and death