George Zhou¹, Marisabel Chang² and Yu Sun², ¹USA, ²California State Polytechnic University, USA

Within the last year through the turmoil of the Covid-19 pandemic, an increasing number of families and individuals are experiencing food insecurity due to a loss of job, illnesses, or other financial struggles [4]. Many families in the Orange County area and abroad are turning to free food sources such as community food pantries or banks. Using specified surveys to food insecure families, we discovered a need for a solution to enhance the accessibility and usability of food pantries [5]. Therefore, we created a software application that uses artificial intelligence to locate specific items for users to request, and allow volunteers to see those requests and pick up the resources from food pantries, and deliver them directly to the homes of individuals. This paper shows the process in which this idea was created and how it was applied, along with the conduction of the qualitative evaluation of the approach. The results show that the software application allowed families and individuals to receive quality groceries at a much higher frequency, regardless of multiple constraints.

Mobile Platform, machine learning, data mining.