Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Hurricane Urban Planning Hazards Research (HUPHR)

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。该奖项将作为一个工程研究中心（ERC）的规划拨款，该中心将解决从海岸到内陆的飓风和严重风暴的化学和生物危害的挑战。这是一项具有重大社会影响的挑战，影响到人类健康和生命损失，特别是对缺乏人力、财政和技术资源来确定、规划和应对潜在风险的弱势社区。化学和生物危害可能源于化学加工、储存和处置设施、水或废水基础设施以及医院和人类卫生保健提供系统的故障。在大多数情况下，暴露和潜在暴露都是新的，只有当化学和生物安全网被风、风暴潮和风暴引发的洪水暂时拉回时才会发生。这些努力将确定和了解社区和社区卫生面临的挑战，以及受严重事件影响的社区与可能导致疫情爆发的疾病媒介之间的联系。具体需求包括更好的预测工具，用于识别潜在危害及其在极端事件中可能造成的风险，并实时了解已实现的风险。物理、化学和生物科学与工程学与医学和公共卫生界的融合对于成功地将危害与已实现的风险结合起来至关重要。规划方法包括与利益相关者进行高性能讨论，以深入了解在ERC中要解决的挑战。知识研讨会将用于开发ERC组件，集成工作将使ERC能够在当前的研究环境中定位。计划与科学和工程专家进行网络视频会议，目的是在集中讨论团队建设和领导能力的高峰研讨会之前，为ERC提供知识共享和团队组建。规划拨款将把参与飓风和严重风暴期间生物和化学危害挑战的不同团体聚集在一起，这些团体通常不会相互作用和合作，从而导致真正的循证和多样化的研究合作。最重要的是，弱势群体，特别是弱势群体将参与ERC。目标是获得有关利益攸关方期望和需求的知情见解，并澄清不同社区对其环境、健康和安全的理解和看法。智力上的优点在于努力理解如何构建伦理委员会，以便通过多学科的努力来最好地解决复杂的社会挑战。更广泛的影响是通过识别和解决与极端事件驱动的社区环境影响相关的挑战，特别是少数民族、弱势群体和移民社区。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 award serves as a planning grant for a proposed Engineering Research Center (ERC) that will address the challenge of chemical and biological hazards of hurricanes and severe storms from coast to inland. This is a challenge that has significant societal impact affecting human health and loss of life especially for disadvantaged communities that lack the human, financial and technical resources to identify, plan for and respond to the potential risks. Chemical and biological hazards can stem from failures in chemical processing, storage and disposal facilities, water or wastewater infrastructure, and hospitals and human health care delivery systems. In most cases, the exposures and potential exposures are novel, only occurring when the chemical and biological safety net has been pulled back temporarily by the wind, storm surge and flooding from the storm. The efforts will identify and understand the challenges to communities and community health and the connection between communities stressed by severe events and disease vectors that might lead to outbreaks. Particular needs include better predictive tools for identifying potential hazards and the risks they may pose in extreme events and real time understanding of the realized risks. The convergence of the physical, chemical and biological sciences and engineering with the medical and public health communities is critical to successfully coupling the hazards with realized risks. The planning approach includes high performance charrettes with stakeholders to develop an in-depth understanding of the challenges to be addressed in the ERC. A knowledge-workshop will be used to develop the ERC components, and integration efforts will enable positioning the ERC within the current research landscape. Web-enabled video conferencing with science and engineering experts is planned for the purpose of knowledge sharing and team formation for the ERC in advance of a culmination workshop focused on team building and leadership. The planning grant will bring together the diverse groups involved in the challenge of biological and chemicals hazards during hurricanes and severe storms that normally do not interact and collaborate, leading to a truly convergent evidence-based and diverse research collaboration. Most importantly, vulnerable communities will be engaged, particularly disadvantaged populations into the ERC. The goal is to gain informed insight into stakeholder expectations and needs and clarifying diverse community understanding and perceptions of their environment, and health and safety. The intellectual merit is in the effort to understand how to frame an ERC to best address complex societal challenges through convergent multidisciplinary efforts. The broader impacts are through the identification and resolution of challenges associated with extreme event-driven environmental impacts on communities, particularly minority, disadvantaged and immigrant communities.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.