Planning Grant: ERC for Control of Urban Thermal Environments (CUTE)

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。这项规划拨款将为未来的工程研究中心制定完善的计划，通过系统地开发和部署热缓解战略，解决关键的技术、社会、政治和经济挑战，从而在城市的健康和福祉方面取得可量化的改善。该团队提出了一个全面的多学科的方法来理解和解决城市热环境的新挑战。持续的增长导致越来越多、越来越大的人为废热排放到城市环境中。要理解并积极地减轻这些影响，以允许持续增长，需要物理和社会科学家、工程师、公共政策专家、城市和区域规划师以及气候学家的参与。任何新方法的实施都需要行业、城市管理部门和广大公众的参与。目前的努力集中在控制建筑外墙和路面的太阳能吸收率，以及种植植被。模型预测控制和人为热释放的实时缓解尚未以系统的方式进行尝试，这将是拟议的多管齐下的努力的重点，以管理热应激和提高城市地区的宜居性。承担这一融合研究合作的团队将在规划拨款期间采用团队科学方法组建，并将涉及具有互补专业知识的大学、国家实验室、工业、市政府和其他利益相关者。在规划赠款期间，还将为拟议的活动制定路线图，包括在具有代表性的城市环境的试验台上对拟议的概念进行大规模实验示范。规划活动将有助于发展四个相互联系的重点。城市热环境的多尺度瞬态模拟，包括人为热源的影响，将通过将区域气象模式与实验验证的更精细分辨率微尺度城市区域耦合来实现实时耦合或前馈模式。这需要解决与执行这种耦合相关的多重挑战，例如，模型物理的不一致性，模型输入，以及跨尺度的参数化。这些模型对近实时热暴露预测的能力将被探讨。将探讨各种人为热管理策略的影响，包括热储存和空气流动管理。除了控制人为的废热来源外，建筑、人行道和绿地的适应性热特性代表了管理城市热环境的创新新机制。一个拥有100万人口的城市的年平均气温可能比周围环境高1-3摄氏度，夜间温差高达12摄氏度。由于极端高温每年造成的与天气有关的死亡人数超过任何其他形式的极端天气，城市人口受到气温上升的不成比例的影响。城市热岛进一步导致夏季能源使用量增加，空调成本增加，空气污染和温室气体排放增加，以及水质恶化。城市气温上升的一个关键因素是建筑采暖通风和空调系统、运输系统和工业过程活动产生的人为热量释放，这些活动可以通过城市温度的实时信息来减少热量暴露。如果没有积极的缓解战略，城市地区的持续增长将对城市人口的健康和生活质量构成越来越大的挑战，能源需求也将急剧增长。拟议的ERC将侧重于开发一个系统框架，以表征和控制城市热环境，加强热浪事件期间的应急响应行动，促进居民的健康和生活质量，并减少一次能源消耗。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。

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. This planning grant will develop well-formulated plans for a future Engineering Research Center that result in quantifiable improvements in health and well-being in cities through the systematic development and deployment of heat-mitigation strategies that address key technological, social, political, and economic challenges. The team proposes a comprehensive multi- disciplinary approach for understanding and addressing the emerging convergent challenges to the urban thermal environment. Continuing growth is resulting in more and larger sources of anthropogenic waste heat, which is released in the urban environment. The understanding and pro-active mitigation of these effects to allow continued growth requires the involvement of physical and social scientists, engineers, public policy experts, city and regional planners, and climatologists. Implementation of any new approaches requires engagement with industry, city administration, and the public at large. Current efforts have focused on controlling the solar absorptivity of building exteriors and pavements, and the planting of vegetation. Model predictive control, and real time mitigation of anthropogenic heat release have not been attempted in a systematic manner, and will be the focus of the proposed multi-pronged effort to manage heat stress and enhance the livability of urban areas. The team to undertake this convergent research collaboration will be assembled during the planning grant using team science approaches, and will involve universities with complementary expertise, national laboratories, industry, city governments, and other stakeholders. During the planning grant, a roadmap for the proposed activities will also be developed, including experimental demonstrations of the proposed concepts in test beds at scale in representative urban environments.The planning activities will help develop four interconnected thrusts. Multi-scale transient modeling of the urban thermal environment, including the effects of anthropogenic heat sources will be achieved by coupling regional meteorological models with experimentally validated finer resolution microscale urban area to achieve real-time coupled, or feed-forward models. This requires addressing the multiple challenges associated with performing this coupling, e.g., inconsistencies in model physics, model inputs, and parameterizations across scales. The ability of these models for near real time heat exposure predictions will be explored. The impact of various strategies for management of anthropogenic heat, including thermal storage, and air flow management will be explored. In addition to controlling anthropogenic sources of waste heat, adaptive thermal properties for buildings, pavements, and green spaces represent an innovative new mechanism for managing the urban thermal environment. The annual mean air temperature of a city of 1 million can be 1-3 degrees Centigrade warmer than its surroundings, with the evening differences as high as 12 degrees Centigrade. With extreme heat accounting for more weather-related deaths each year than any other form of extreme weather, urban populations are disproportionately impacted by rising temperatures. Urban heat islands further result in increased summertime energy usage, higher air-conditioning costs, increased air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as degradation of water quality. A key contributor to the urban air temperature rise is anthropogenic heat release from building heating ventilation and air-conditioning systems, transportation systems, and industrial processes' activities that could be managed to lessen heat exposure with real-time information on temperatures across cities. Without active mitigation strategies, continued growth of urban areas poses increasing health and quality of life challenges for urban populations, as well as sharply growing energy demand. The proposed ERC will focus on developing a systematic framework to characterize and control the urban thermal environments, to enhance emergency response operations during heat wave events, to contribute to the health and quality of life of the inhabitants, and to reduce primary energy consumption.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.