PARTNER: An AI/ML Collaborative for Southeast Florida Coastal Environmental Data and Modeling Center

Florida International University, Miami FL

Investigators

Abstract

This project is an ExpandAI Partnership between the Florida International University (FIU), North Carolina State University (NCSU), Texas A&M Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC), and the AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography (AI2ES). In this project, a minority-serving institution leads a new collaboration with two other MSIs and an AI Institute focused on scaling up already-established research and education programs at their institutions and to pursue shared, complementary goals around developing AI with use for society in mind and for developing the next generation of AI education and workforce talent. The collaborative research focuses on the development of AI to manage threats of flood damage and other environmental stresses faced by areas with high coastal population, with an emphasis on environmental impacts in Southeast Florida. The project will also build community around this new center of excellence in AI where such activities were not previously well developed. This project establishes the South Florida Coastal Environmental Data and Modeling Center at Florida International University (FIU), promoting integrated research and education efforts to develop artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for understanding and predicting the key processes affecting ocean, urban, agricultural, and natural systems, and for studying coastal environmental issues important to South Florida. This region encompasses ecologically sensitive and economically important areas, such as Biscayne Bay, urbanized corridors, tributary watersheds bordering the Bay, and the surface and groundwater systems in regional watersheds. Due to high property values, dense population, and vulnerable low-lying areas, the region is highly susceptible to flood damage and other environmental stresses such as sea-level rise, urban flooding, water quality monitoring, and harmful algae bloom detection. The project focuses on four areas. Firstly, the Center manages and makes curated datasets AI-ready and publicly available for testing AI/ML techniques and developing solutions. Secondly, the researchers collaborate on trustworthy AI for understanding and predicting coastal environmental phenomena, including developing physics-informed AI models, reliable AI systems, and explainable AI methods. Thirdly, the researchers apply AI/ML to study South Florida coastal environmental problems, such as sea-level variability, compound coastal flooding, and harmful algae blooms. Lastly, FIU and AI2ES provide education, training, and workforce development opportunities for diverse undergraduate and graduate students at FIU in AI/ML and Environmental Science, including developing an undergraduate interdisciplinary program, strengthening pathway programs for students from 2-year colleges, sharing education materials, and facilitating research exchange and building alliances among institutions via site visits, internship opportunities, and cross-institution workshops and seminars. The project is partially funded by NSF’s Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program within the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM.” This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.