CAREER: An Integrated Research and Education Plan to Navigate Tradeoffs in the Design of Sustainable and Resilient Water Reuse Systems

该项目将解决可靠获得安全水的一个关键障碍：缺乏广泛采用水再利用战略。这一障碍源于无法在不损害公众健康的情况下升级、重新设计或整合废水和饮用水处理方法，或招致令人无法接受的高昂财务或环境成本。该研究计划将产生数据、理解、工具和流程的基础，以推动可持续和有弹性的水再利用战略的广泛采用。它将创建一个全面的评估框架，将可持续性和弹性原则结合起来，以帮助识别隐藏的障碍和重要的权衡。它允许通过实验和建模建立一组扩展的变量，从而实现废水和饮用水过程模型的集成。它描述了现有和新的水再利用技术的安全运行空间，并划定了一个决策空间，以说明将收集的利益攸关方数据，以增进对不同观点的理解。最后，该项目将通过严格的多年反复努力开发有效的新教学方法，以改进决策技能集和保留能力。研究计划首先通过评估一系列技术的性能来建立对重复使用选择范围的理解，以(1)阐明现有和新的水再利用技术在可能的设计和操作条件下的安全操作空间。接下来，它超越了技术绩效，以(2)建立一个全面的、定量的评估框架，并将其与重用过程建模和利益相关者的观点集成在一个可适应的决策支持模型中。最后，通过进行情景分析来利用集成决策支持模型来(3)确定可持续水再利用应用的显著特征和特征，并试图利用这一洞察力来阐明变化的驱动因素、障碍和杠杆。通过改进利益攸关方的参与和对工程学学生的培训，将加强拟议研究工作的适用性和采纳性。研究目标与综合教育和推广目标相结合：(1)加强对不同观点的沟通和理解，(2)培养驾驭不确定性和权衡取舍的能力。外展工作包括通过一系列研讨会、案例研究和在线调查征求和纳入各种利益攸关方(公众消费者、工业消费者、工程师、研究人员、监管机构和公用事业公司)的意见。教育工作包括评估不同的方法，以提高对不确定性和权衡的理解，在多种情况下，通过开发和评估本科生环境工程教学模块的有效性，并通过开发“邪恶问题”纸牌游戏。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。

This project will address a critical barrier to reliable access to safe water: the lack of widespread adoption of water reuse strategies. This barrier stems from an inability to upgrade, re-design, or integrate wastewater and drinking water treatment approaches without compromising public health or incurring unacceptably high financial or environmental costs. The research plan will generate a foundation of data, understanding, tools, and processes to advance widespread adoption of sustainable and resilient water reuse strategies. It will create a comprehensive assessment framework that integrates sustainability and resilience principles to help identify hidden barriers and important tradeoffs. It allows for the integration of wastewater and drinking water process models by establishing an expanded set of variables through experimentation and modeling. It characterizes the safe operating space of existing and novel water reuse technologies as well as demarcates a decision space that accounts for the stakeholder data that will be collected to improve understanding of diverse perspectives. Finally, the project will develop effective new teaching approaches via a rigorous multi-year, iterative effort to improve decision- making skill sets and retention.The research plan starts by building an understanding of the scope of reuse options by evaluating the performance of a portfolio of technologies to (1) elucidate the safe operating spaces of existing and novel water reuse technologies across a landscape of possible designs and operational conditions. Next, it expands beyond technology performance to (2) establish a comprehensive, quantitative assessment framework and integrates it with reuse process modelling and stakeholder perspectives in an adaptable decision-support model. Finally, it takes advantage of the integrated decision-support model by conducting a scenario analysis to (3) identify salient features and characteristics of sustainable water reuse applications, and seeks to leverage this insight to elucidate drivers, barriers, and levers of change. The applicability and adoption of the proposed research efforts will be enhanced by improved stakeholder engagement and engineering student training. The research objectives are combined with integral education and outreach objectives to: (1) improve communication and understanding of diverse perspectives, and (2) foster an ability to navigate uncertainty and tradeoffs. Outreach efforts include soliciting and incorporating input through a series of workshops, case studies, and online surveys from a diverse range of stakeholders (public consumers, industrial consumers, engineers, researchers, regulators, and utilities). Education efforts include evaluating different approaches to improve understanding of uncertainty and tradeoffs, in multiple contexts, by developing and assessing the effectiveness of undergraduate environmental engineering teaching modules and by developing a “wicked problems” card game.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.