"Analyzing biases that impact visit estimation of urban parks & green spaces"

Afra Mashhadi, assistant professor, Computing & Software Systems, UW Bothell

Recent years have seen an increase in the use of social media for various decision-making purposes in the context of urban computing and smart cities, including management of public parks. However, as such decision-making tasks are becoming more autonomous, a critical concern that arises is the extent to which such analyses are fair and inclusive. 

In this talk, Dr. Mashhadi, whose research focus is in Computational Behavioral Modeling and applied Machine Learning, will demonstrate some recent work in understanding biases that impact visitation estimation. She will present how AI algorithms, when evaluated through the lens of fairness, can have an impact on sensitive demographic groups. She will also show how external factors play an important role in understanding biases. To this end, she will also present parts of a current large-scale study of the impact of COVID-19 on park visitation.