Detecting Emerging Threats in Injury and Violence Using Network Science

• Status: Open
• Prize: $7500
• Entries Received: 0

Contest Brief

IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ THE FULL CHALLENGE BRIEF THAT CONTAINS ALL THE CHALLENGE AND SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS AND RULES

FULL CHALLENGE BRIEF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jb8V-ZnENuoB2yF3l88euNgJJsE9bObs/view?usp=sharing
REGISTRATION FORM: https://forms.gle/w5KCtQHUkHpMr6iFA

Apply your network science skills to identify and characterize emerging health threats in the areas of suicide, overdose, or adverse childhood experiences.

DETECTING EMERGING THREATS IN INJURY AND VIOLENCE USING NETWORK SCIENCE CHALLENGE
Are you interested in working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (Injury Center) in having a positive impact on the health and safety of Americans? Do you enjoy working with network science, algorithms, and datasets? The Detecting Emerging Threats in Injury and Violence Using Network Science Challenge gives you the opportunity to discover a new application of network science to impact emerging health threats, win your share of a $16,000 prize purse, and receive national recognition.
To participate, you will need to provide a network science approach to one of the Injury Center’s priority topics - Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), Suicide, and Drug Overdose. The Injury Center hopes solutions to this Challenge will find novel ways to identify, characterize, and prevent emerging injury-related health threats more quickly. If you can use social media data sources to make predictions about future threats, leverage the latest advances in machine learning and AI, or find another new way of applying network science to this challenge, you could win!

CHALLENGE OVERVIEW
The Injury Center protects Americans by using data and research to understand how to prevent injuries and violence and then puts it into practice. Through this Challenge, the Injury Center wants to determine how network science can be used to support their work. For this challenge, they are looking for innovative solutions that use network science to address one or more of their priority emerging health threats – ACEs, suicide, and drug overdose.

Submissions must demonstrate the effectiveness of the network science approach, show the potential impact the solution could have on the area(s) addressed, describe the approach to the problem, and describe the data used for the solution. The data must be accessible, from reliable data sources, and U.S. based. Submissions will be judged on the quality of the proposal, the relevance and accessibility of the data sources, and the approach to the problem. Both theoretical and submission with demonstrating data/mathematical solutions will be accepted; submissions that can demonstrate the solution will score higher.

Solvers will have eight weeks from launch to submit their solution. Up to three prizes will be awarded to the top solvers that achieve the requirements of the challenge for a total of $15,000. First place will be awarded $7,500, second place will be awarded $5,000, and third place will be awarded $2,500. Up to ten additional $100 prizes will be awarded for innovative solutions that meet the criteria. All teams that meet the criteria will receive a CDC certificate of participation. The results from the winning solutions may be used to publish a scientific paper.

CHALLENGE BACKGROUND
CDC works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety, and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. To accomplish their mission, CDC conducts critical science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive and dangerous health threats and responds when these arise. The Injury Center (https://www.cdc.gov/injury/), part of CDC, focuses on protecting Americans from injury and violence which are leading causes of death for children and adults ages 1-45 in the U.S. The Injury Center uses data to understand when and why violence and injuries occur; data and data systems help them understand the burden of unintentional and violence-related injury and death in the U.S. They then use data and research to develop strategies to prevent injury and violence. The Injury Center has three priority topics: protecting youth from adverse childhood experiences, combating overdose, and preventing suicide.

PRIZES
Total Purse: $16,000

Up to 3 prizes will be awarded to the top solvers that achieve the requirements of the challenge for a total of $15,000. The best solution will be awarded $7,500, second place will be awarded $5,000, and third place will be awarded $2,500. Up to ten additional $100 prizes will be awarded for innovative solutions that meet the criteria. All competitors that meet the criteria will receive a certificate of participation from CDC.

CDC reserves the right to negotiate licenses for additional submitted solutions.

REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS
Registration will be open from the launch of the challenge until the submission deadline of January 5, 2022 5:00 PM ET.

To Register for the Challenge, Teams must:
1. Sign up for an account on the Freelancer.com platform
2. Complete and submit the Registration Form (https://forms.gle/wJsX3PTx7GNYba7i9)

Registration Forms will be reviewed for eligibility; ineligible teams will be notified and teams that meet the Challenge eligibility requirements, as listed in the Rules, may continue in the competition.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
1. WHITE PAPER
The White Paper information must be submitted using the Challenge Submission Form (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jaRjbRrXeZ1yvJ2TZPPTG0YYnRPAvaph/view?usp=sharing).

2. CODE/MATHEMATICAL METHODS
While you will not be required to submit your code or mathematical solutions, they must be made available to the judging team to test their validity. All information required to reproduce your results must be made available. Submissions must be uploaded to your private GitHub repository and access must be granted to the Challenge team.

3. GITHUB ACCESS
To submit your compiled solver and source code through GitHub, you will need to provide the Challenge Team access to your private GitHub repository. You must also provide a directory file describing each item in your repository.

To do so, share your GitHub repository with the following GitHub username: poweredbyFLN

RULES
CDC and employees of Challenge partners reserve the right to update or modify this challenge at any time. Updated material will be made available to all participants.

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
- By participating in a Freelancer.com contest, each participant (whether an individual, group of individuals, or entity) must agree to and abide by the following: Freelancer Eligibility Policies, Freelancer User Agreement, and the Freelancer Copyright Infringement Policy. Each participant must complete and comply with the Freelancer KYC process. All team members must meet Freelancer eligibility policies (https://www.freelancer.com/support/General/restrictions-in-some-countries?w=f&ngsw-bypass=). 

- All team members must be at least 18 years old. The team lead must be eligible to receive payment under the laws of the United States; U.S. federal sanctions prohibit participation from certain countries. (see: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Pages/Programs.aspx).

- NASA and employees of Challenge partners are not eligible to participate. Federal employees acting within the scope of their employment are not eligible to participate. Any individual or entity associated with the development or administration of this challenge is ineligible to compete. Government contractors working on the same or similar projects are ineligible to participate in the Challenge.

- Funds from U.S. or foreign government organizations should not be used to directly fund the development of a solution to this Challenge. Solutions that were previously developed with Government/Federal funds, or where Government/Federal funds, including but not limited to, employee time, materials, and reviews, were utilized to prepare the submission or solutions are prohibited.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
- Solutions must originate from either the U.S. or a designated country (see definition of designated country at https://www.acquisition.gov/far/part-25#FAR_25_003), OR have been substantially transformed in the US or designated country prior to delivery pursuant to FAR 25.403(c).

- Phase 1 submissions must be uploaded to the Challenge page before the deadline, January 5, 2022, at 5:00 pm ET. No late submissions will be accepted.

- All submissions must be in PDF format, in English, and machine readable (not handwritten).

PAYMENT
For any prize award, the winner will receive the full amount awarded; any Freelancer seller fee will be refunded to the winner.
If participating as a team, all payments will be made to the Team Leader who is solely responsible for the distribution of funds among team members.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Each Winning Team (whether an individual or group of individuals) selected to win a prize under this Challenge must apply a permissive open source license, such as Apache 2.0, to their solution(s) and retain the software and accompanying documentation in a publicly available repository until June 3, 2025.

If you are unable to comply with the IP agreement for part of your solution, contact the challenge team at [email protected]

Please submit questions to the challenge Public Clarification Board or to [email protected].

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FULL CHALLENGE BRIEF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jb8V-ZnENuoB2yF3l88euNgJJsE9bObs/view?usp=sharing
REGISTRATION FORM: https://forms.gle/w5KCtQHUkHpMr6iFA

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