Using Web Crawlers/Scrapers and Big Data Analytics to Identify Funding for School Safety Programs against Mass Shootings

Abstract

Technology has changed significantly over the last decade. The pervasiveness of the Internet impacts behaviors from how one performs research, to telehealth, to communications through social media. One responsibility of Technology Managers is to leverage technology in a manner to apply a remedy to a problem or system. Our research project was to solve the problem of using technology to automate the process of identifying funding for school safety programs addressing mass shootings. The team realized the problem was complex in its construct. There were issues consistent with (1) identifying the sources of funding, (2) understanding the processes required to access those funds, (3) extracting and aggregating large volumes of data, (4) interpreting and analyzing the data, and (5) identifying the decision makers in the process. This proposal attempts to solve the problem and offer a solution utilizing Big Data Infrastructures/Analytics and Business Intelligence to identify and report the most optimal funding opportunities.