INSPIRE Track 1: Advancing groundwater restoration through qualitative analysis: What practitioners and stakeholders care about and why it matters

1344238（Rabideau）。 该奖项部分由NSF工程理事会（ENG）和NSF社会，行为和经济科学理事会（SBE）资助。该项目的动机是长期存在的不活跃的废物场地难以恢复受污染的土壤和地下水。最近，国家研究理事会（NRC，2012）确定了数千个复杂的网站，“复杂”是指一系列物理，化学和监管因素，抑制清理。由于NRC委员会无法确定潜在的技术突破，其报告侧重于这些站点的长期管理（LTM）需求，这将需要监管机构，责任方和东道国社区之间数十年的合作。虽然对LTM的关注代表了地下水恢复文化的进步和积极发展，但一些引人注目的替代LTM的方法尚未得到充分评估，包括：（1）重新启动研究议程，开发具有成本效益的清洁技术，以及（2）从当前实践的范式转变（强调对健康/成本权衡的技术分析）转变为一个更全面的决策过程，其中考虑到当地利益攸关方的价值观以及适应性管理、可持续性、环境正义、代际公平。INSPIRE团队汇集了来自环境工程、哲学、社会学和口述历史的学者，以解决拟议的向LTM转变所提出的重要问题：（1）补救技术的工程实施不足在多大程度上导致未能实现清理目标（与假定的受污染场地固有的挑战相反），（2）占主导地位的风险与成本范式是否充分地参与了实践者和利益相关者所持有的环境价值观（包括可持续性），（3）政府监管机构、责任方、技术专业人员、公民和学术研究人员之间的群体认同和核心价值观和信念的差异如何塑造GR实践和政策制定，以及（4）如何适当地参与社区居民的关注，他们将受到向LTM过渡的最大影响？认识到上述问题不容易通过学科或“专家小组”研究来解决，这个为期三年的INSPIRE项目将强调对录音数据（RAD）的定性分析，收集和分析100-200小时的RAD，来自焦点小组，研讨会对话，口述历史证词，以及与专业人士，政府，学术界和公民实践者和利益攸关方。开放式访谈是一个完善的和适当的工具，参与，研究，并从当地学习，往往没有记录，知识的不同社区，从事复杂的项目，如GR。使用新的数据库工具，主题映射轶事访谈作为意义密集的RAD，分析方法，如框架分析，由跨学科团队合作应用，将支持新的决策模式的发展，以更有效地管理遗传资源和复杂的废物场地。传播的结果将包括期刊文章，面向教师的研讨会，以及支持协作奖学金的新工具。该项目将通过严格审查普遍存在的假设，即恢复到基于健康的水平对大多数网站来说在技术上是不可行的，并通过评估替代范式，如重振基础研究，适应性管理和/或可持续性分析，来推进GR领域。两名博士，一名硕士和几名本科生将接受跨学科研究的前沿培训。此外，RAD数据的协作定性分析经验（整个研究团队共同工作）将构成一个新的和潜在的变革性研究模型，完全整合科学，工程，伦理和政策。

1344238 (Rabideau). This INSPIRE award is partially funded by the NSF Engineering Directorate (ENG) and the NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE). This project is motivated by the long-standing prevalence of inactive waste sites resistant to the restoration of contaminated soil and groundwater. Recently, the National Research Council (NRC, 2012) identified thousands of complex sites, "complex" referring to a collection of physical, chemical, and regulatory factors that inhibit cleanup. Because the NRC committee was unable to identify potential technological breakthroughs, its report focused on the need for long-term management (LTM) of these sites, which will require many decades of cooperation between regulatory agencies, responsible parties, and host communities. While attention to LTM represents a progressive and positive development in the culture of groundwater restoration (GR), some compelling alternatives to LTM have not been fully evaluated, including: (1) a reinvigorated research agenda to develop cost-effective cleanup technologies, and (2) a paradigm shift from current practices (which emphasize technical analysis of health/cost tradeoffs) to a more holistic decision process informed by local stakeholder values and the core ideals of adaptive management, sustainability, environmental justice, and intergenerational equity. The INSPIRE team brings together scholars from environmental engineering, philosophy, sociology, and oral history to address important questions raised by the proposed shift to LTM: (1) to what extent has inadequate engineering implementation of remedial technologies contributed to failures to achieve cleanup targets (in contrast to the presumed inherent challenges of contaminated sites), (2) has the dominant risk-versus-cost paradigm adequately engaged the environmental values held by practitioners and stakeholders (including sustainability), (3) how has GR practice and policy development been shaped by group identify and differences in core values and beliefs among government regulators, responsible parties, technical professionals, citizens, and academic researchers, and (4) how should the concerns of community residents, who will be most affected by the transition to LTM, be appropriately engaged? Recognizing that the above questions are not easily addressed by disciplinary or "expert panel" research, this three-year INSPIRE project will emphasize the qualitative analysis of recorded audio data (RAD), collecting and analyzing 100-200 hours of RAD from focus groups, workshop dialogues, oral history testimonies, and phone interviews with a diverse community of professional, government, academic and citizen practitioners and stakeholders. Open-ended interviews are a well-established and appropriate vehicle to engage, study, and learn from the local, often undocumented, knowledge of the diverse communities that engage in complex projects such as GR. Using new database tools for thematically mapping anecdotal interviews as meaning-dense RAD, analytic methods such as frame analysis, applied collaboratively by the interdisciplinary team, will support the development of new decision paradigms for more effectively managing GR and complex waste sites. Disseminated results will include journal articles, practitioner-oriented workshops, and new tools to support collaborative scholarship. The project will advance the field of GR by critically examining the pervasive assumption that restoration to health-based levels is technological infeasible for most sites, and by assessing alternative paradigms such as reinvigorated basic research, adaptive management, and/or sustainability analysis. Two doctoral, one MS, and several undergraduate students will receive cutting-edge training in cross-disciplinary research. Furthermore, the experience of collaborative qualitative analysis of RAD data (by the entire research team working together) will constitute a new and potentially transformative model for research that fully integrates science, engineering, ethics, and policy.