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

社会依赖于有复原力的基础设施以及不间断地提供饮用水、电力和废水处理;当基础设施没有复原力时，危害和灾害可能会破坏这些服务，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灾害的抵御能力对社会至关重要，也是一项重大的工程挑战。虽然人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的层面的理解存在根本性的差距。特别是，我们无法解释为什么基础设施管理人员压倒性地专注于建立对过去的弹性，从中断中恢复过来，而不是向前发展或建立对未来危险和意外的弹性。这个教师早期职业发展（CAREER）补助金支持基础研究，将解决知识的这一差距：推进弹性理论，包括人的因素，确定不同的人的因素，必要的反弹以及反弹向前，产生可操作的知识，将提高美国基础设施系统的弹性，并开发课程，教育学生和专业人员了解工程中的人的因素。新颖的综合研究和教育方法为学生提供了独特的机会，让他们参与研究，帮助解决社会问题，并有助于缩小工程中的性别差距。除了培养一名博士后研究员和研究生及本科生外，该项目还将吸引包括150名学生和200-250名基础设施管理人员和政府官员在内的广泛受众。该研究推进了对弹性和弹性理论的基本理解，使研究人员能够评估一系列关键基础设施中弹性的人的因素，这在以前是不可能的。它还提出了新的方法，并应用实验技术来证明提高弹性的工具的有效性，以及提高学生对工程的理解和承诺的新教育模式。这项研究的结果将为学者们提供一种新的理论和方法来评估人类的复原力，并将为从业者提供关于如何衡量和改善基础设施对当前和未来灾害的复原力的具体指导。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将被制作并广泛提供。该奖项将通过出版物和会议以及网络研讨会、培训和演示向合作伙伴、基础设施管理人员及其社区进行广泛传播。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。

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.