IRES Track II/Collaborative Research: PREEMPTIVE Multidisciplinary Natural Hazards Engineering Institute Series for Advanced Graduate Students

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New technologies for improving the safety of infrastructure during natural hazards are advancing through ongoing research in the United States (U.S.) and abroad. Locations that have been recently impacted by earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes form prime opportunities for multidisciplinary groups of graduate students from the U.S. to learn the lessons of how infrastructure protective systems performed during recent disasters so that these students can direct their current and future research in the most contemporary and productive directions to better prepare the U.S. for future natural hazards. The objective of this award is to engage U.S. advanced graduate students from various disciplines in embedded learning through research at the forefront of protective systems for natural hazards engineering on the Pacific rim and beyond, and to build a sustained research community between them and their overseas counterparts. The award will enable six Advanced Studies Institutes (ASIs), each in a different location, in which the U.S. students learn from local and U.S. faculty experts, initiate protective systems research in natural hazards engineering, and experience first-hand the effects of natural hazards on built environments. Through these activities, this award advances U.S. scientific capabilities in multidisciplinary components of natural hazards engineering, and trains a diverse upcoming cohort of the scientific workforce to preemptively advance new technologies to prepare for future disasters at home; collaborate with counterparts, senior and early career faculty; and establish a new multidisciplinary approach to engineering hazard resilience. The project will involve a total of 81 U.S. graduate students via the six ASIs in different sites around the world. The PREEMPTIVE (Pacific Rim Earthquake Engineering Mitigation Protective Technologies International Virtual Environment) ASIs explore topics in disaster science and resilient infrastructure from a highly multidisciplinary perspective to train a diverse group of graduate students in the broad areas of protective systems and disaster mitigation. A series of six week-long PREEMPTIVE ASIs are planned over three years, each enabling a cohort of advanced graduate students and senior and early-career faculty from the U.S. with counterpart faculty and students from around the world to learn about global efforts in protective systems for natural hazards, establish new frontiers of multidisciplinary research, and form long-term global professional relationships. The ASIs will explore the Resilience of Aging Infrastructure, Tsunami Hazards and Infrastructure Resilience, Structural Control & Geotechnical Challenges, Extreme Earthquake & Tsunami Hazards, Hurricane and Multi-Hazards, and Interdisciplinary Disaster Science in Costa Rica, Thailand, New Zealand, Chile, Puerto Rico, and Japan. Each ASI will consist of 2-3 day workshops, 1-2 day cultural and technical tours to provide context to the performance of protective systems in recent natural hazards, and 2-3 day collaborative group projects providing guided experiential learning experiences in infrastructure protective systems. Through this award, U.S. graduate student researchers learn to be preemptive in: addressing current and future research needs in advanced hazards mitigation; collaborating with overseas counterparts; and establishing a new multidisciplinary approach to engineering hazard resilience. The U.S. graduate student participants are selected via rigorous application processes. Student learning outcomes will be assessed through a variety of modalities, analyzed and disseminated through a website and in conference and journal publications.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.