Small Businesses (SB) create 1.5M jobs per year, and COVID-19 is having a negative impact on most of them. Under COVID-19, 35% of SB closed doors. For Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs, the prospects are more negative as 41% of Black-owned SB are closing in the same period. These two groups are also disproportionately affected by rising unemployment. This challenge proposes pilots in WA, MD, OK.

Anti-homeless laws produce various forms of police interactions that fall short of arrest, yet have wide-ranging impacts on the urban poor. Laws and enforcement fail to reduce urban disorder, but create instead a spatial churn in which homeless people circulate between neighborhoods and police jurisdictions rather than leaving public space.

Thousand of buildings in the US, and globally, are operated with outdated or complex management systems that require significant time and resources to ensure building is running at optimal performance. The advances in Artificial Intelligence can automate and improve building performance reducing energy and carbon emissions while improving comfort and impacting the bottom line.

With the goal of giving start-up entrepreneurs and investors a novel way to connect, digital platforms and crowd-source funding can bring attention to socially conscious startups and get them the funding they deserve.

Exploring the symbolic meaning of guns in the United States may be one the best ways to approach theoretical questions concerning the effect of culture in action because it focuses on a single object -the gun- which brims with symbolic power far beyond its physical utility.

How does money influence U.S. elections and public policy? Whether you are a voter, journalist, activist, student or interested citizen, you should be able to easily see who and what is paying for a campaign, and how that might influence the outcome.

Without neighborhood businesses and local hiring, community and household wealth cannot grow in a self-sustaining way and contribute to the overall population and household wealth. Historically, there is a lack of participation in traditional financial institutions in Black communities.

By leveraging crowdsourcing, social media and technology to offer citizens a platform they can get involved and engage with their local government in a way they never have before.

Race-related stressors that can affect the mental health of socially disadvantaged racial and ethnic populations. Although discrimination is the most studied aspect of racism, racism can also affect mental health through structural/institutional mechanisms and racism that is deeply embedded in the larger culture.

The risk of flooding is increasing. Flood damage losses are expected to increase fourfold by 2050, costing $1 trillion globally. Unfortunately, in dealing with this growing problem those at risk have to rely on predicted flood information, rather than real-time information.