EAGER: Joint Hazard Mitigation in the Era of COVID-19: Implications for Engineered Structures and Services

在应对正在进行的COVID-19大流行期间，人们理所当然地将重点放在了控制疫情的传统公共卫生努力上；然而，不那么突出但同样重要的是，建筑环境本身在放大和抑制COVID-19影响方面的作用。在前一种情况下，这包括密集的、高度集中的物理工作空间，而在后一种情况下，这包括对分散的物理工作空间（如私人住宅）或虚拟空间（如在线学习）的适应性使用。在2019冠状病毒病疫情期间，自然灾害（如飓风、龙卷风和地震）同时发生的前景可能会给当前和未来的应对工作带来压力，并可能使之混乱。因此，这项探索性研究的早期概念拨款将探索工程结构和服务在建筑环境中的作用，以加强努力，防止流行病共同危害成为社会灾难。这将需要开展基础研究，探索支持减灾的新理论、方法、数据和技术，并与多个组织合作，包括美国国家科学基金会支持的自然灾害工程研究基础设施及其组成部分（https://www.DesignSafe-ci.org）。该项目将有助于美国国家科学基金会在国家减少地震灾害计划（NEHRP）和国家减少风暴影响计划（NWIRP）中的作用。该项目将制定和传播一个研究框架和相应的研究议程，以支持更好地了解建筑环境在减轻或放大与大流行联合危害有关的风险方面的作用。案例研究数据将被收集和分析，导致一个初步的研究框架。研究议程将在危害领域广泛和多样化的研究人员和实践者的密切合作下制定，从而围绕这一主题产生一系列基本的方法、经验和概念挑战。该项目可能彻底重新审查当代减轻灾害和基于绩效的工程概念，并采用新的跨学科方法来理解物理和虚拟设施/服务之间的关系，以减轻大流行病的共同危害，这是一项高风险的努力，远远超出了当前民用基础设施和自然灾害研究的智力界限。这项工作的结果有望在工程的各个分支中激发新的研究路线，潜在地为这个项目之外的进展提供信息。最终，该项目的整体和情境化方法将有助于设计一个更公平、功能更强大和更安全的建筑环境，非常适合未来可能出现高度破坏性流行病与其他危害共同发生的情况。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。

Much emphasis during the response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has rightly been on traditional public health efforts at controlling it; however, less prominent but no less vital is the role of the built environment itself in both amplifying and suppressing the effects of COVID-19. In the former case, this includes densely-packed, highly centralized physical work spaces, while in the latter this includes adaptive use of decentralized physical work spaces (such as private homes) or virtual ones (as for online learning). The prospect of co-occurrence of natural hazards (such as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes) during the COVID-19 regime is likely to strain and possibly confound ongoing and future response efforts. Accordingly, this EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) will explore the role of engineered structures and services within the built environment in order to improve efforts to prevent pandemic joint hazards from becoming societal disasters. This will require basic research in exploring new theories, methods, data and technologies for supporting mitigation, together with collaborations with multiple organizations, including the NSF-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure and its components (https://www.DesignSafe-ci.org). This project will contribute to NSF's role in the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) and the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP). This project will develop and disseminate a research framework and corresponding research agenda to support improved understanding of the role of the built environment in mitigating or amplifying risks associated with pandemic joint hazards. Case study data will be collected and analyzed, leading to an initial research framework. The research agenda will be developed with close cooperation from a broad and diverse set of researchers and practitioners in the hazards domain, resulting in a set of fundamental methodological, empirical and conceptual challenges around this topic. The project’s potentially radical re-examination of contemporary notions of hazard mitigation and performance-based engineering, as well as its engagement of new interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the relationship between physical and virtual facilities/services in mitigating pandemic joint hazards, represents a high-risk endeavor falling well outside the intellectual boundaries of current civil infrastructure and natural hazards research. The results of this work are expected to spur new lines of inquiry in various branches of engineering, potentially informing advances well beyond this project. Ultimately, this project's holistic and contextualized approach will contribute to the design of a more equitable, functional and safer built environment, well suited to a future that is likely to be marked by highly disruptive pandemics occurring jointly with other hazards.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.