Developing Cutting-Edge Data Infrastructure to Answer Community Questions in North Carolina

DataWorks is a partner in the three-year, $3 million project IMPACT project, along with Duke’s Renaissance Computing Institute and partners at UNC Chapel Hill, Duke University, and Indiana University, which aims to allow researchers to share and analyze data across institutional boundaries. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project team is building a technology infrastructure that supports best practices in moving data, managing data, ensuring security and preserving privacy. DataWorks will provide the social science researchers with data sets, such as crime, voting records, building permits, property records, and business licenses, to test the platform on real-world research questions. One research project will investigate relationships between race, justice, and political engagement using election data, policing and crime data, and community-level demographics.