SEES Fellows: Sustainable Infrastructure in a Changing Climate

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The project is supported under the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows) program, with the goal of helping to enable discoveries needed to inform actions that lead to environmental, energy and societal sustainability while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. Sustainability science is an emerging field that addresses the challenges of meeting human needs without harm to the environment, and without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. A strong scientific workforce requires individuals educated and trained in interdisciplinary research and thinking, especially in the area of sustainability science. With the SEES Fellowship support, this project will enable a promising early career researcher to establish herself in an independent research career related to sustainability. This project addresses the need of incorporating climate trends and projections to ensure the sustainability of long-term planning in the infrastructure sector. For infrastructure in particular (e.g., roads, bridges, culverts, and storm drainage systems), future change may shift many of these risks beyond historical and even current design standards. Modifying existing infrastructure and ensuring new construction will be adapted to future change is a central and critical concern surrounding the issues of infrastructure resiliency and sustainable infrastructure design. The proposed work will combine state-of-the-art models and tools in climate change research with engineering know-how to help design stronger and longer-lasting infrastructure for the future. Advances in both high-resolution climate modeling and implementation of climate projections in infrastructure engineering will enhance collaboration efforts within the ICNet RCN and significantly contribute towards the science of sustainable engineering under changing environmental conditions. This proposal aims to reduce the knowledge gap between climate scientists and engineers and to address specific challenges that climate change poses to infrastructure engineering. It will explore the ways in which climate information can be used to inform design standards to build better bridges and roads that will last longer in the future and require less money and energy to maintain.