Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Built Infrastructure Geospatial Data Acquisition, Visualization, and Analysis (BIGDAVA)

规划拨款：已建基础设施地理空间数据获取、可视化和分析工程研究中心(BIGDAVA)项目摘要关键基础设施(建筑物、道路、给水系统、下水道系统等)在美国的城市和农村环境中，这一现象继续恶化，专家的评价很差，并造成了巨大的经济和社会压力。重要的文化古迹也在继续恶化，可供维护的资源有限。这些重要的基础设施和古迹进一步受到各种灾害的威胁，如地震、山体滑坡、龙卷风、飓风和洪水。与此同时，数字技术的飞跃正在推动我们朝着智慧城市的前景迈进。物联网(IoT)、5G网络、微卫星、人群共享和自动驾驶汽车都提供或要求与我们的基础设施进行更高水平的智能交互。先进的地理空间数据(地图)可用于管理、监控和升级我们的基础设施，包括激光雷达(光探测和测距)和无人机系统(UAS或无人机)成像等技术。我们的经济正变得越来越依赖及时的地理空间信息，以便做出更明智和更快的决策。然而，有效利用地理空间技术的要求很高，具备适当专门知识的劳动力日益短缺。与此同时，大学和技术学院提供的专注于地球测量学和地理空间技术基础的专业课程有限，尤其是在土木工程专业，这些专业培养建设和维护基础设施的工程师。这笔规划赠款是发展工程研究中心(ERC)的重要一步，该中心可以提供重要资源，加强对地理空间数据的获取，并扩大全国各地进行地理空间教育的机会。越来越大的3D地理空间数据集需要高端工作站、熟练的程序员和昂贵的软件来利用高级可视化和分析功能。数据处理通常包括繁琐的手工任务，导致处理过程中的主观性，限制了丰富的、定量的信息的价值。尽管有这些挑战，地理空间技术的投资回报(ROI)可能是巨大的，特别是对于在资产管理中使用这些技术的公共实体。ERC BIGDAVA的愿景是提供最先进的解决方案，以应对这些挑战，使用一种融合的跨学科模型，提供对地理空间数据应用的新颖研究，以增强我们已建成的基础设施，包括3D规划、设计和施工流程，提高对自然灾害的复原力，以及对重要的自然和人为文化遗产的数字保护。这笔规划拨款将通过为不同利益攸关方举办研讨会来确定关键瓶颈，并建立一支由能够开发和传播新解决方案的高技能学者和行业专家组成的团队，为环境与和解委员会奠定基础。为了实现和实施这一愿景，提供这些好处，许多技术挑战需要通过环境与合作委员会的研究活动来解决。虽然存在各种地理空间分析算法和处理软件，但大多数可用的解决方案无法扩展到目前定期收集的数据集的大小，并且随着技术的不断进步将不会有效。结果，人们被迫使用实际数据的一小部分。为了充分发挥这些新数据集的潜力，需要更智能的算法、数据模型和可视化技术。GPU架构、深度学习和人工智能等技术进步非常适合创建更智能的算法，因为它们能够更高效地处理大数据集。拟议的电子数据中心将探索新的方法，通过视觉交互和利用这些新技术，更有效地从这些极其庞大和不兼容的数据集中提取有用的信息。有了这些新的算法和集成的方法，新的科学见解和发现将成为可能。今天，许多科学家花费大量时间管理数据和多个软件程序，而不是探索创新的科学假设。最终的ERC的一个关键目标将是开发创新的数据处理解决方案，使这些丰富的数据集能够得到更广泛和有效的使用，使下游用户能够更少地关注数据管理，而更多地关注如何利用信息来满足数字社会的需求。规划拨款活动将支持确定和建立团队中所需的多样化专业知识，并聚集推进潜在BIGDAVA ERCT的研究、教育、包容和创新目标所需的多个利益相关者。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Built Infrastructure Geospatial Data Acquisition, Visualization, and Analysis (BIGDAVA)Project AbstractCritical infrastructure (buildings, roadways, water systems, sewer systems, etc.) in both urban and rural settings in the U.S. continues to degrade, receiving poor ratings by experts and causing significant economic and societal stress. Important cultural monuments also continue to deteriorate with limited resources available for maintenance. These vital infrastructure and monuments are further threatened by a variety of hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, tornadoes, hurricanes, and flooding. Simultaneously, leaps in digital technology are moving us towards the promise of Smart Cities. The Internet of Things (IoT), 5G networks, micro-satellites, crowd sharing, and autonomous vehicles all offer or require a higher level of intelligent interaction with our infrastructure. Advanced geospatial data (maps) are available for the management, monitoring, and upgrading of our infrastructure including technologies such as lidar (light detection and ranging) and unmanned aircraft system (UAS or drone) imaging. Our economy is becoming increasingly reliant on timely geospatial information in order to make more informed and faster decisions. Nevertheless, requirements for the effective use of geospatial technology are high and there is a growing workforce shortage with the appropriate level of expertise. At the same time, there are limited offerings at universities and technical schools of dedicated courses focused on geomatics and geospatial technology fundamentals, particularly within civil engineering programs, which produce the engineers who build and maintain infrastructure. This planning grant is an important step to develop an Engineering Research Center (ERC) that can provide vital resources enhancing accessibility to geospatial data and expansion of opportunities for geospatial education across the country. Increasingly large 3D geospatial data sets require high-end workstations, skilled programmers, and expensive software to leverage advanced visualization and analysis capabilities. Data processing often includes tedious manual tasks, leading to subjectivity in processing and limiting the value of rich, quantitative information. Despite these challenges, the return on investment (ROI) from geospatial technologies can be tremendous, especially for public entities who utilize these technologies in asset management. The vision of the ERC BIGDAVA is to provide state-of-the-art solutions to address these challenges using a convergent, interdisciplinary model that provides novel research into geospatial data applications that enhance our built infrastructure including 3D planning, design and construction processes, increased resilience to natural hazards, and digital preservation of important cultural heritage - both natural and anthropogenic. This planning grant will build the foundation for the ERC through workshops for diverse stakeholders to identify key bottlenecks as well as building a highly skilled team of academics and industry experts who can develop and disseminate novel solutions.To achieve and implement this vision to provide these benefits, many technical challenges need to be addressed through the research activities of the ERC. While a variety of geospatial analysis algorithms and processing software exist, most available solutions cannot scale to the sizes of datasets now being regularly collected and will not be effective as the technology continues to advance. As a result, people are forced to work with small subsets of the actual data. Smarter algorithms, data models, and visualization techniques are needed to exploit the full potential of these new datasets. Technological advances such as GPU architecture, Deep Learning, and Artificial Intelligence are well-suited to the creation of smarter algorithms, since they enable more efficient processing of large datasets. The proposed ERC will explore new approaches that more efficiently extract usable information from these extremely large and incompatible datasets via visual interaction and exploitation of these new technologies. With these new algorithms and integrated approach, new scientific insights and discoveries will be possible. Today many scientists spend a significant portion of their time managing data and multiple software programs rather than exploring innovative, scientific hypotheses. A key goal of the eventual ERC will be to develop innovative data processing solutions that enable more widespread and effective use of these rich datasets, allowing downstream users to focus less on managing data and more on how to leverage the information to address the needs of a digital society. The planning grant activities will support identifying and building the required diverse expertise in teams and gather the multiple stakeholders necessary for advancing the research, educational, inclusion, and innovation goals of the potential BIGDAVA ERCThis 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.