CAREER: Household Network Modeling and Empathic Learning for Integrating Social Equality into Infrastructure Resilience Assessment

这个教师早期职业发展计划（Career）项目旨在了解灾害中家庭和基础设施网络之间的相互作用，目标是在将社会不平等因素纳入基础设施弹性研究和教育方面开辟新的领域。该研究将审查由于基础设施服务中断而影响脆弱人群（例如老年人和低收入家庭）风险差异的家庭网络动态。教育目标是将同理心和以人为本的考虑与技术概念结合起来，培训下一代弹性基础设施的实践者和研究人员。这一科研贡献支持了NSF促进科学进步和提高国家福利的使命。在这种情况下，预期的结果将产生变革性的想法，以加强如何最好地生产和管理基础设施系统，以促进为不同亚人群提供社会公正和有弹性的服务。这个项目包括一个综合的研究、教育和推广计划。本项目的研究部分将：(1)实证地描述家庭层面的社会人口特征、期望、规范和其他因素对基础设施中断时服务差距和调整做法的影响；(2)在邻里尺度上对家庭社会网络进行建模和分析，以确定社会网络结构和稳定性对信息扩散和通过社交媒体调整行为的影响；(3)分析基础设施网络与家庭社会网络的相互作用，考察城市尺度下不同亚人群风险差异的空间格局。研究方法涉及家庭调查、细粒度社交媒体数据分析和基于计算代理的建模之间的方法融合，以提取、表征、模拟和检查家庭网络。该研究方法将在飓风哈维袭击休斯顿的背景下进行测试，重点关注电力、水和道路的中断。该项目的教育部分将创建并测试一个共情学习模式，该模式由多个以人为中心的课程模块、跨学科服务学习项目和研讨会组成，以促进参与学生的共情和批判性思维技能。外展活动和服务学习项目将重点关注休斯顿服务不足的社区，并将涉及与利益相关者和居民的深入社区参与，以广泛传播调查结果。这些综合研究、教育和外联内容将促进融合研究，将社会平等与基础设施复原力相结合，并在基础设施服务的规划和优先排序中更好地纳入弱势群体的需求。该项目还将为服务不足的社区以及未来具有复原力意识和同理心的工程师提供能力建设。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。

This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) project seeks to understand the interaction between households and infrastructure networks in disasters with the goal to break new ground on integrating social inequality considerations into infrastructure resilience research and education. The research will examine household network dynamics influencing disparities in risks among vulnerable populations (e.g., older adults and low income families) due to infrastructure service disruptions. The education objective is to integrate empathy and human-centric considerations with technical concepts in training next-generation practitioners and researchers of resilient infrastructure. This scientific research contribution thus supports NSF's mission to promote the progress of science and to advance our national welfare. In this case, the anticipated outcomes will yield transformative ideas to enhance how infrastructure systems can best be produced and managed to promote socially just and resilient services for different subpopulations. This project involves an integrative research, education, and outreach plan. The research component of this project will: (1) empirically characterize the influence of household-level socio-demographic characteristics, expectations, norms, and other factors on service gaps and adjustment practices when infrastructure disruptions occur; (2) model and analyze household social networks at the neighborhood scale to determine the effects of social network structure and stability on the diffusion of information and adjustment practices through social media; and (3) analyze the interplay between infrastructure networks and household social networks to examine the spatial patterns of risk disparity among different sub-populations at the urban scale. The research approach involves methodological fusion among household surveys, fine-grained social media data analytics, and computational agent-based modeling to extract, characterize, simulate, and examine household networks. The research approach will be tested in the context of Hurricane Harvey in Houston with a focus on electricity, water, and road disruptions. The education component of this project will create and test an empathic learning model consisting of multiple human-centric course modules, interdisciplinary service-learning projects, and seminars to promote empathy and critical thinking skills in participating students. The outreach activities and service learning projects will focus on underserved neighborhoods in Houston and will involve deep community engagement with stakeholders and residents to broadly disseminate findings. These integrative research, education, and outreach elements will promote convergence research for integrating social equality with infrastructure resilience and better incorporate the needs of vulnerable populations in planning and prioritization of infrastructure services. The project will also lead to capacity building for underserved communities, as well as resilience-aware and empathic engineers of the future.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.