Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM

Huang Receives NSF Grant for Mobile Crowdsourcing System

Tuesday, February 24, 2015, By Diane Stirling
Share
Research and CreativeSchool of Information Studies

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a continuing grant to School of Information Studies (iSchool) assistant professor and principal investigator Yun Huang to examine two questions related to public safety and mobile crowdsourcing.

Yun Huang

Yun Huang

The two-pronged study, the first phase of which has been funded for $100,255, will initially focus on research to determine what factors motivate and influence individuals to report information of a public safety nature. The second part will assess whether having crowdsourced information improves the ability of public safety departments to communicate more promptly and effectively with the communities they serve. That segment will include Huang’s leading a student team in the building of a prototype app to test the behavioral models researched, and to see if crowdsourced information sharing is an effective addition to community public safety resources.

Behavioral Models

The research will involve conducting surveys and interviews and running lab studies to determine how anticipated information-reporting behaviors align with individuals’ actual behaviors in relation to the reporting of public safety information and incidents. Huang says that will include studying what type of information individuals are willing to share, varying from innocuous incidents such as the reporting of a lost item to issues of a heightened nature, such as the location of a public disturbance or the occurrence of accidents or even suspected or witnessed criminal activity.

“Law enforcement agencies have begun to tap into crowdsourcing applications and social media in their practices, such as allowing people to report safety issues via mobile apps and reporting crimes on Twitter,” she notes. “This research aims to investigate key factors that motivate and influence people’s willingness to share safety-related information in a mobile social environment.”

Huang will also work with her research collaborator, Assistant Professor Corey White from the Department of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, to continue their research on employing computational modeling techniques from cognitive psychology to build decision models. She said those models will be used to assess which factors impact individuals’ decisions about whether they will share information, and to what degree they will initiate information reporting.

Corey White

Corey White

The research also will assess whether nudge mechanisms can be developed that encourage people to share public safety information in an informed and timely manner, says Huang. It may turn out that reporting behaviors are based on “intrinsic factors, such as the desire to improve society or the desire for knowledge,” and other indicators, such as “whether it’s known that people will be hurt or property will be damaged,” she adds.

App Development

In the second phase, Huang will lead development of a mobile crowdsourcing application that integrates the decision models discovered in the earlier research. The prototype app, called S4S (Sharing for Support/Safety), will be field-tested to address the kinds of public safety issues that arise for students and community residents who inhabit locales surrounding institutions of higher learning. That testing will help determine whether crowdsourcing (where many individuals voluntarily provide simultaneous, real time data) can enhance the ability of public safety departments to receive information more quickly and with greater detail—thus increasing the potential of public safety departments to better and more quickly respond to situations.

“We here at the iSchool are very proud of Yun Huang’s receipt of this NSF award. The grant is particularly exciting because it is Yun’s first NSF grant where she is working as the lead principal investigator,” says Interim Dean Jeff Stanton. “Crowdsourcing is a very powerful mechanism that deserves more research attention, and Yun’s prior work has shown very clearly that she is ready to make an impact in this area.”

Huang says law enforcement agencies have generally begun to use social media to help them address issues and better engage with their publics. That has occurred at Syracuse University, where Huang and a team of students collaborated with the Department of Public Safety to develop a mobile app. Called “SU DPS,” which displays maps of locales, reports of where incidents have occurred and prompt notifications about incidents. It is also a conduit for campus-wide ORANGE alerts. The app is available on Google Play for Android systems.

Recruiting Students

Huang has been researching the topic of crowdsourcing for public safety since 2013, and her research has involved a number of students. They have included Yu Sun, Jing Zhu, Rucha Avinash Somani, Elliot Tan, Huichuan Xia and Cheng Ji. Since most have graduated or are ready to graduate this semester, she is interested in meeting students who want to discuss research involvement and opportunities on the newest project, she says.

The total NSF project funding over both phases of the project is expected to be approximately $180,000.

  • Author

Diane Stirling

  • Recent
  • The Racket About Padel: Newhouse Students Partner With Global Media Firm to Track Rise of Sport
    Friday, July 11, 2025, By Genaro Armas
  • From Wedding Day Pics on Campus to Working at ‘Otto’s House’: Brianna and Kevin Shults Share Their Orange Love Story
    Friday, July 11, 2025, By Jen Plummer
  • Vintage Over Digital: Alumnus Dan Cohen’s Voyager CD Bag Merges Music and Fashion
    Monday, July 7, 2025, By John Boccacino
  • Empowering Learners With Personalized Microcredentials, Stackable Badges
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By Hope Alvarez
  • WISE Women’s Business Center Awarded Grant From Empire State Development, Celebrates Entrepreneur of the Year Award
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By Dawn McWilliams

More In STEM

6 A&S Physicists Awarded Breakthrough Prize

Our universe is dominated by matter and contains hardly any antimatter, a notion which still perplexes top scientists researching at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but now nearly everything—solid, liquid, gas or plasma—is…

Setting the Standard and Ensuring Justice

Everyone knows DNA plays a crucial role in solving crimes—but what happens when the evidence is of low quantity, degraded or comes from multiple individuals? One of the major challenges for forensic laboratories is interpreting this type of DNA data…

Student Innovations Shine at 2025 Invent@SU Presentations

Eight teams of engineering students presented designs for original devices to industry experts and investors at Invent@SU Final Presentations. This six-week summer program allows students to design, prototype and pitch their inventions to judges. During the program, students learn about…

WiSE Hosts the 2025 Norma Slepecky Memorial Lecture and Undergraduate Research Prize Award Ceremony

This spring, Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) held its annual Norma Slepecky Memorial Lecture and Award Ceremony. WiSE was honored to host distinguished guest speaker Joan-Emma Shea, who presented “Self-Assembly of the Tau Protein: Computational Insights Into Neurodegeneration.” Shea…

Endowed Professorship Recognizes Impact of a Professor, Mentor and Advisor

Bao-Ding “Bob” Cheng’s journey to Syracuse University in pursuit of graduate education in the 1960s was long and arduous. He didn’t have the means for air travel, so he voyaged more than 5,000 nautical miles by boat from his home…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2025 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.