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SBP-BRiMS 2018 Grand Interdisciplinary Data-Science and Modeling Challenge.

George Washington University,Washington DC, USA

(part of the SBP-BRiMS 2018 conference - July 10 – July 13, 2018)

http://sbp-brims.org/2018/




Opioids are a class of drugs that include illegal drugs (heroin), synthetic 
drug (e.g. fentanyl), and many pain relievers (e.g Vicodin®). These drugs are 
chemically related and interact with the opioid receptors on nerve cells in the 
body and brain.

The US is facing an opioid crisis.  Deaths from opioids are increasing.  Opioid 
abuse is a serious public health issue.  Today, overdose deaths are the leading 
cause of injury deaths in the US.



In this year’s SBP-BRiMS challenge problem, we ask participants to consider the 
issue of Opioid abuse.



The broad questions of interest are:

  *   How can we use openly available data design effective intervention 
strategies?
  *   What are the socio-demographc and spatial predictors of regions where 
opioid abuse is likely to increase?
  *   What interventions might mitigate the opioid problem?
  *   What populations are most at risk from opioid abuse and where are they?



These questions are only intended to give a rough idea of what might be an 
interesting topic to explore for this challenge problem, and by no means the 
only questions of interest. All entries must have both a strong social theory, 
political theory or policy perspective and a strong methodology perspective.



Rules

●  Participants may work individually or in teams.

● Participants must use the Cincinnati Heroin overdose data - 
https://insights.cincinnati-oh.gov/stories/s/Heroin/dm3s-ep3u/

●  Participants should address a social science theory or policy relevant issue 
and should employ one or more methodologies appropriate for the empirical 
assessment of or forecasting on the basis of big data (e.g., computational 
algorithms, machine learning, computer simulation, social network analysis, 
text mining).

●  Each participating team may prepare only one entry.

●  Entries must represent original work that has not been previously published 
or submitted to other challenges.

●  Each participating team must send at least one member to the SBP-BRiMS 2017 
conference to present a poster describing their entry.  At least one team 
member must register and attend the conference.

●  Participants are encouraged to use a second data set.  This data set must be 
either publicly available data or the participants must make it publicly 
available by submitting it along with their challenge paper.

●  At the conference, all entries will be judged by the community using a 
participant voting system.  Voting will be done separately for student-led and 
non student-led projects.

●  The individual or group that submits the winning entry will have their full 
length paper describing their challenge solution published in an SBP-BRiMS 
special issue of the journal Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory.



Guidelines

A strong entry generally has one or more of these components:

●  Employ multiple data sets.

●  Be theory based.

●  Include at least one high quality visualization (note that participants will 
be allowed to display dynamic visualizations via some form of electronic media 
e.g., by hanging a tablet from the poster. However, please note that tables 
will not be provided).

● Account for biases in the data across time, space, topics and sources.

●  Demonstrates a deep understanding of the problem being addressed.

●  Providea a new metric, simulation or algorithm development such as:

  1.  A new spatial, temporal, or network analytic methodology or algorithm, or 
a simulation model, that can cope with the vast scale of open source data 
(e.g.Twitter data) and support answering a key social or policy issue.
  2.  A new spatial analytic methodology that can better take into account 
change over time and non-spatial distances (such as co-occurrences and semantic 
similarity between locations).
  3.  A new network methodology that better incorporate the diversity of actor 
and relationship types in the data, spatio-temporal information, or for 
constructing edges from the data and for distributing actor and edge attributes 
onto the graph.
  4.  A novel simulation that that supports reasoning about the spread of fake 
news or propaganda that uses empirical data to either instantiate the model or 
to confirm some of the results.

●  Generates a new empirical finding that challenges or provides novel support 
for existing social or political theory, or provides information of policy 
relevance.  Note, the results of computer simulation are viewed as empirical 
findings.



In addition, a strong entry should be well-written and provide some level of 
creativity in its use of or combination of data.

Submitting and Entry
What to Submit

You need to submit 3 things - An extended abstract, A PDF of your poster, and A 
powerpoint promotion slide.  All three of these will go in the on-line 
proceedings.



Extended Abstract: A 2-page abstract describing the project.  This should 
define:

●      What social/policy question was asked or challenge addressed?

●      Why is this question important or the challenge critical in the context 
of fake news and/.or propaganda?

●      What data sets were used?

●      What is the novel contribution?

●      What is the key methodology or methodologies used?

●     What is the key policy issue or theory being addressed?

  1.   Who is the team? Provide names, email and institution.



A pdf of the poster.  This will be put on line.

You are, however, responsible for printing and bringing your own poster to the 
conference. An easel will be provided, but not posterboard.

The poster should be either 4’x3’ or 3’x4’.



Promotion Slide

This is a single powerpoint slide.  The purpose of this slide is to excite 
people to come to your poster.  This slide will also be put on line.  You will 
be given one minute to present this slide at the conference to encourage people 
to come and see your poster. This slide should contain:

  *   Title of project
  *   Names of all team members

This slide may contain

  *   Any word or image or idea that you think will promote your poster
  *   Logos for your group, company or organization

When to Submit

Challenge Response Submission: 14-May-2018

At this point just send the short abstract.
Author Notification: 01-June-2018
Final Version Challenge Response Submission: 25-June 2018

At this point send the paper, the slide, and a PDF of the poster.

How to Submit

All challenge participants will need to submit these items:

  1.  Short Abstract: Due May 14th, This is a maximum of 6 pages including 
references and figures. It should address what was done, how it was done, what 
data was used, and how this met the challenge.
  2.  One page slide: This is a synopsis slide that will be used in the 1 
minute teaser presentation to get people to come to the poster.
  3.  PDF of the poster that can be viewed online.
  4.  Final Challenge paper: Due June 25th, This is a maximum of 10 pages 
including references and figures. These should not have been submitted 
elsewhere. These will be put on the conference website as part of the online 
proceedings which is not archival. In addition, the final paper of the winner, 
runner up, and potentially other final papers, will be published in a special 
issue of the journal of Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory 
which is archival. Submission of a challenge entry constitutes willingness to 
have the final challenge paper published in the venue.
  5.  Who is the team? Provide names, email and institution.
  6.  The abstract, slide, and poster that are student-led need to be clearly 
marked as student-led.  To be considered student-led the following conditions 
must be met:
     *   The project was led by a student enrolled in a university
     *   The project is not coming out of a corporation, government lab, or 
FFRDC





What to present

All entries will send at least one team member to SBP-BRiMS 2017 who will be 
registered for the conference by the <<early registration deadline>> to present 
their poster in the evening poster session.  The poster will be 4’x3’ or 3’x4’. 
 Participants may bring in additional props to enhance their presentation.  In 
addition, the team spokesperson should be ready to present a 1 minute talk 
using the slide, to encourage people to come to their poster.  Each team will 
also do a short talk that will be video taped and made available describing 
their approach and solution.  Finally, the winning entry will give a short talk 
on the last day of the conference.

How entries will be judged

Entries will be judged by community voting at the poster session.



Who is eligible

Anyone with an interest in using this data to address a social or policy issue. 
Entries are accepted from single individuals or teams.

Winning Entry

The final paper for the winning entry will be published in the journal 
Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory – in the SBP-BRiMS 2018 
special issue.



A member of the team that developed the winning entry will do a short 
presentation on the final day of the conference describing the response.

Data Sets

We invite participants to explore the online repository for heroin overdoses in 
Cincinnati Ohio.

The data is at https://insights.cincinnati-oh.gov/stories/s/Heroin/dm3s-ep3u/.

This data is comprised of the Cincinnati Fire Department responses to reported 
heroin overdose incidents, and does not include patient information or medical 
outcome data.  It is continually updated, so you will need to state when the 
data was pulled.  Geo-spatial information is provided.

Challenge Committee

Kathleen M. Carley

Ayaz Hyder

Submit Questions Regarding Challenge

All questions and concerns can be sent to sbp-br...@andrew.cmu.edu





Some useful references:

Compton, Wilson M., and Nora D. Volkow. "Major increases in opioid analgesic 
abuse in the United States: concerns and strategies." Drug & Alcohol Dependence 
81, no. 2 (2006): 103-107.



Rudd, Rose A., Noah Aleshire, Jon E. Zibbell, and R. Matthew Gladden. 
"Increases in drug and opioid overdose deaths—United States, 2000–2014." 
American Journal of Transplantation 16, no. 4 (2016): 1323-1327.



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