Professional Development Fellowship on socio-technical factors that enable institutions to anticipate, recognize, and respond to failures in stewardship of contaminated sites

这一专业发展奖学金由美国国家科学基金会的科学、技术和社会计划支持，开发了一个培训和研究项目，用于对受污染场地的管理进行知情的机构分析。美国各地数百个地点正在清理化学物质和放射性核素的污染。虽然联邦、州和地方机构以及各种非政府组织和私人团体正在推进许多地点的清理工作，但清理工作往往并不意味着所有污染物都已被清除。当残留污染物仍然存在时，必须建立机制，对剩余污染物和为控制它们而建立的系统进行长期机构管理(也称为长期管理)。这些机制可能涉及工程控制和体制控制的结合，例如旨在防止污染物迁移或侵入的物理屏障，以及限制开发或公共准入以控制或防止暴露在残留污染物中的体制控制。对站点的长期管理(LTS)的需求是普遍的。然而，缺乏设计和维护LTS系统的分析框架，必须努力借鉴其他环境中的模型和框架。这一专业发展奖学金促进了知识的发展，以支持改进LTS系统的实际应用。作为研究金的一部分进行的研究将在2-3个案例研究中探讨以下方面：a)预测、识别和应对工程和体制控制失败的LTS系统要求，以及b)公众参与在实现这些职能方面的作用。这项研究比较了这些观点如何反映关于在很长一段时间内创建和维持资源和危险管理机构的分析主张。用于确定创建和维持LTS系统的命题的四个研究流侧重于：高可靠性组织、适应性管理、风险治理和共用资源。这项工作的学术价值在于建立了对LTS和公众参与LTS的概念性理解和理论。该研究金通过在紧迫的社会挑战中提供实践信息来提供更广泛的影响：保护健康和环境不受将长期受到污染的场地的影响。

This Professional Development Fellowship--supported by the Science, Technology & Society Program at NSF--develops a training and research project for an informed institutional analysis of stewardship of contaminated sites. Contamination by chemicals and radionuclides is being cleaned up at hundreds of sites around the US. While Federal, state, and local agencies, as well as various NGOs and private parties, are moving ahead with clean-ups of many sites, oftentimes, cleanup does not mean that all contaminants have been removed. When residual contamination remains, mechanisms must be established for longterm institutional management (also called longterm stewardship) of the remaining contaminants and of the systems put in place to contain them. The mechanisms may involve a combination of engineering controls, such as physical barriers intended to prevent contaminant migration or intrusion, and institutional controls, such as restriction of development or public access to contain or prevent exposures to residual contamination. The need for longterm stewardship (LTS) of sites is widespread. Analytic frameworks for designing and sustaining LTS systems are lacking, however, and efforts must draw on models and frameworks from other contexts. This Professional Development Fellowship promotes development of knowledge to support improvements in practical applications of LTS systems. Research conducted as part of the Fellowship will explore in 2-3 case studies perspectives about: a) LTS system requirements for anticipating, recognizing, and responding to failures of engineering and institutional controls, and b) the role of public participation to achieve these functions. The research compares how these perspectives reflect analytical propositions about creating and sustaining resource and hazard management institutions over long periods of time. The four streams of research used to identify propositions for creating and sustaining LTS systems focus on: high reliability organizations, adaptive management, risk governance, and common-pool resources. The intellectual merit of this work is to build conceptual understandings and theory of LTS and of public participation in LTS. The Fellowship provides broader impacts by informing practice in a pressing social challenge: the protection of health and the environment from sites that will remain contaminated for very long periods of time.