CAREER: Humanizing Engineering and Resilience: An Integrated Research and Education Approach to Understand and Enhance Infrastructure Resilience

社会依赖于有弹性的基础设施以及不间断地提供饮用水、电力和废水处理；当基础设施没有弹性时，危险和灾害可能会扰乱这些服务，造成巨大的经济损失以及对人类和环境的影响。提高国家基础设施对当前和未来危险的韧性对社会至关重要，也是一项重大的工程挑战。虽然我们对复原力的物理和技术层面了解很多，但我们对复原力的人性层面的理解存在着根本的差距。特别是，我们无法解释为什么基础设施管理者压倒性地专注于建立对过去的韧性，从中断中恢复过来，而不是向前反弹或建立对未来危险和意外的韧性。这笔学院早期职业发展(Career)补助金用于支持基础研究，这些研究将弥补知识上的差距：推进弹性理论，将人的因素包括在内，确定反弹和向前反弹所需的不同人的因素，产生可操作的知识，提高美国基础设施系统的弹性，并制定课程，教育学生和专业人员工程中的人的因素。这种新颖的综合研究和教育方法为学生提供了从事研究的独特机会，为他们帮助解决社会问题做好了准备，并有助于缩小工程学领域的性别差距。除了培养博士后研究人员以及研究生和本科生，该项目还将吸引广泛的受众，包括150名学生和200-250名基础设施经理和公职人员。这项研究促进了对复原力和复原力理论的基本理解，使研究人员能够评估一系列以前不可能实现的关键基础设施的复原力的人因因素。它还提出了新的方法，并应用实验技术来证明提高复原力的工具的有效性，以及增强学生对工程的理解和承诺的新教育模式的有效性。这项研究的结果将为学者评估人类复原力的维度提供新的理论和方法，并将为实践者如何衡量和提高基础设施对当前和未来危险的复原力提供具体指导。将制作独特的定量和定性数据集、交互式图形显示以及专业和本科工程课程，并广泛提供。该奖项将通过出版物和会议以及网络研讨会、培训和面向合作伙伴、基础设施经理及其社区的演示进行广泛传播。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。

Societies depend on resilient infrastructure and the uninterrupted provision of drinking water, electricity, and wastewater treatment; when infrastructure is not resilient, hazards and disasters can disrupt these services causing enormous economic losses and human and environmental impacts. Improving the resilience of the nation’s infrastructure to current and future hazards is vital for society and a grand engineering challenge. While much is known about the physical and technical dimensions of resilience, there are fundamental gaps in our understanding of the human dimensions of resilience. In particular, we cannot explain why infrastructure managers overwhelmingly focus on building resilience to the past, bouncing back from disruption, rather than bouncing forward or building resilience to future hazards and surprise. This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant supports fundamental research that will address this gap in knowledge to: advance resilience theory to include human dimensions, identify the different human dimensions factors necessary to bounce back as well as bounce forward, produce actionable knowledge that will enhance resilience of U.S. infrastructure systems, and develop curricula to educate students and professionals about human dimensions of engineering. The novel integrated research and education approach offers unique opportunities for students to engage in research, prepares them to help solve societal problems, and helps diminish the gender gap in engineering. In addition to training a postdoctoral researcher and graduate and undergraduate students, this project will engage a broad audience including 150 students and 200-250 infrastructure managers and public officials.This research advances fundamental understanding of resilience and resilience theory to enable researchers to assess human dimensions factors of resilience across a range of critical infrastructure not previously possible. It also advances novel methods and applies experimental techniques to demonstrate the effectiveness of tools for improving resilience and of a new educational model for enhancing student understanding and commitment to engineering. Results from this research will provide scholars with a new theory and methods for assessing human dimensions of resilience and will give practitioners concrete guidance on how to measure and improve infrastructure resilience to present and future hazards. Unique quantitative and qualitative datasets, interactive graphic displays, and professional and undergraduate engineering curricula will be produced and made widely available. Broad dissemination will occur through publications and conferences as well as webinars, trainings, and presentations to partners, infrastructure managers, and their 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.