Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Advancing a Circular Water Economy (ACWa-Econ)

规划资助：循环水经济工程研究中心（ACWa-Econ）

• 批准号: 1840249
• 负责人: William Arnold
• 金额: $ 9.42万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-01 至 2020-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1840249&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Planning; Grant; Engineering; Research; Center

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.By the year 2025, two-thirds of the world's population is expected to live under conditions of water-stress. This has been identified as an enormous global risk, based on the potential impact of this water crisis on society. The National Science Foundation's Engineering Research Center (ERC) program provides national investment in engineering solutions for high-impact societal benefit, and this planning grant will be used bring together scientists, engineers, industry leaders, social scientists, and entrepreneurs to develop the framework for an ERC that will ultimately lead to breakthrough on how water is treated and managed in the United States and beyond. The potential benefits of the project are (1) increased capacity within institutions and the scientific/engineering community to perform impactful and inclusive research on the circular water economy, (2) enhanced understanding of methods to increase diversity and create a culture of inclusion within a research enterprise, (3) strengthened relationships between water-focused researchers and the industrial, non-profit, government, and community partners that can facilitate societal impact, and (4) knowledge among the team of different leadership and management approaches and their benefits and challenges. The provision of clean water and the development of strategies--technological, economic, and societal--to create a true circular water economy is clearly an area of high-impact societal benefit. For this reason, we have proposed a series of planning activities that will allow us to build capacity and an inclusive culture around the challenge of solving technical water provision and reuse problems while also addressing the global and national health and economic risks of water stress and water reuse. We will work to incorporate the expertise of scientists, engineers, and computational scientists with the perspective of entrepreneurs and social scientists. Central to these activities will be the inclusion of individuals who, by nature of their cultural, racial, gender, or ethnic identification, see problems and solutions differently, and the tight integration with industrial, governmental, and non-governmental partners that are critical to implementing research into a true circular water economy. Through this grant we will share deep subject-matter expertise, co-create novel hypotheses and focal points for future research, identify critical characteristics of an inclusive culture and effective strategies for including diverse researchers, perspectives, and approaches into a large research effort, and identify successful management and leadership strategies for large and diverse groups. These activities will build national capacity to make smart water reuse a reality, as well as facilitate inclusion and better leadership across all those involved with the effort. The plan that develops will be technically grounded, broadly supported by stakeholders, and will incorporate risk aversion, economics, and different corporate and cultural "frames" to facilitate high-impact solutions to the problem of water-stress.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.

工程研究中心规划拨款竞赛是ERC项目的试点征集。规划补助金不需要作为ERC竞赛的一部分，但它旨在在团队之间建立能力，以规划聚合的、中心规模的工程研究。到2025年，预计世界三分之二的人口将生活在缺水的条件下。基于水危机对社会的潜在影响，这已被确定为一个巨大的全球风险。美国国家科学基金会的工程研究中心（ERC）项目为具有高影响力的社会效益的工程解决方案提供国家投资，这项规划拨款将用于汇集科学家、工程师、行业领袖、社会科学家和企业家，为ERC制定框架，最终在美国及其他地区的水处理和管理方面取得突破。该项目的潜在好处是：(1)提高机构和科学/工程界对循环水经济进行有影响力和包容性研究的能力；(2)加强对研究企业内部增加多样性和创造包容性文化的方法的理解；(3)加强以水为重点的研究人员与工业、非营利组织、政府和社区合作伙伴之间的关系，从而促进社会影响。(4)团队中不同领导和管理方式的知识及其益处和挑战。提供清洁水和制定技术、经济和社会战略，以创造真正的循环水经济，显然是一个具有高影响社会效益的领域。为此，我们提出了一系列规划活动，使我们能够围绕解决技术供水和水再利用问题这一挑战建设能力和包容性文化，同时也应对用水压力和水再利用带来的全球和国家健康和经济风险。我们将努力将科学家、工程师和计算科学家的专业知识与企业家和社会科学家的观点结合起来。这些活动的核心将是吸纳那些因其文化、种族、性别或民族认同而对问题和解决办法有不同看法的个人，并与工业、政府和非政府合作伙伴紧密结合，这对实施真正的循环水经济研究至关重要。通过这项资助，我们将分享深厚的主题专业知识，共同创造未来研究的新假设和重点，确定包容性文化的关键特征，以及将不同研究人员、观点和方法纳入大型研究工作的有效策略，并为大型和多样化的群体确定成功的管理和领导策略。这些活动将建立国家能力，使智能水再利用成为现实，并促进所有参与这项工作的人的包容和更好的领导。制定的计划将在技术上有基础，得到利益相关者的广泛支持，并将纳入风险规避、经济学以及不同的企业和文化“框架”，以促进解决水资源紧张问题的高影响力解决方案。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。