EAR-PF: Green infrastructure scaling from local observations to regional applications as a coupled human-water system

Cyndi V. Castro博士获得了NSF博士后奖学金，在Murugesu Sivapalan教授的指导下，在伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校研究基于自然的解决方案（NBS）的规模问题。传统上，雨水是通过灰色基础设施处理的，这些基础设施将降雨迅速输送到异地。另一方面，NBS使用天然材料通过现场保留来减缓雨水流动。随着降雨量的增加，有必要在整个城市框架内建立综合的NBS，以减轻排水网络的负担。 NBSs在特定地点的应用中表现出很大的前景，然而，由于缺乏流域尺度关系，这种技术的广泛使用还没有发生。NBS解决方案的功效是当地条件的复杂函数（即，降雨量、流动时间、土地特征）。表征尺度关系的需要包括NBS系统与社会之间的相互作用。人为对集水区的影响改变了水文响应，是人水耦合系统的重要组成部分。本研究旨在更好地了解城市流域水文和社会现象的影响力和可扩展性，以填补重要的知识空白，并提高国家统计局解决方案的广泛实施。这项工作对在城市环境中使用NBS具有广泛的影响，并将努力让德克萨斯州休斯顿的年轻人参与拟议的研究。 该项目还包括改善国家统计局在经济弱势社区的基础设施的计划，并将与处理洪水和暴雨的各种利益相关者进行接触。 Castro博士建议通过结合传统的自上而下和自下而上的建模方法来研究与NBS相关的缩放定律。卡斯特罗博士将通过已建立的学术-政府伙伴关系与各种全球气候适应领导人进行接触，以更好地了解与NBS进程相关的管理社会影响。她将通过数据驱动的计算建模和相似性分析，包括空间特征（流域属性）和时间变异性（降雨持续时间，集中时间），确定管理物理过程。将采用自上而下的方法，通过使用桶模型来理解宏观尺度的治理过程。对总体水平衡的过程控制将从长期的径流特征中提取，并在递减尺度上进行粗粒度处理。最后，卡斯特罗博士将研究自下而上的确定性模型和自上而下的桶模型之间的共享行为，阐明这两种方法的重叠之处，从而将NBS过程跨尺度联系起来。通过确定可扩展的常见社会和水文因素，卡斯特罗博士寻求对NBS过程的新颖描述，以改善跨空间和时间域的规划。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Dr. Cyndi V. Castro has been granted an NSF EAR Postdoctoral Fellowship to study issues of scale regarding nature-based solutions (NBSs) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with mentoring from Professor Murugesu Sivapalan. Traditionally, stormwater is dealt with through grey infrastructure, which rapidly transports rainfall offsite. NBSs, on the other hand, use natural materials to slow stormwater flow through onsite retention. As rainfall conditions intensify, integrated NBSs become necessary throughout the urban framework to alleviate overburdened drainage networks. NBSs have shown great promise in site-specific applications, however, widespread use of such technology has not occurred due to a lack of catchment-scale relationships. The efficacy of NBS solutions is a complex function of local conditions (i.e., rainfall, flow travel times, land characteristics) that are not well understood. The need to characterize scale relationships includes interactions between NBS systems and society. Anthropogenic effects on catchments alter the hydrologic response and are an important component in coupled human-water systems. This study aims to better understand the influence and scalability of hydrological and social phenomena in urban watersheds to fill an important knowledge gap and to improve widespread implementation of NBS solutions. The work has broad implications for the use of NBSs in urban settings and will work to involve the youth of Houston, Texas, in the proposed research. The project also includes plans to improve infrastructure for NBS in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and will engage with a wide variety of stakeholders who deal with flooding and stormwater. Dr. Castro proposes to investigate the scaling laws associated with NBSs by combining traditional top-down and bottom-up modeling approaches. Dr. Castro will engage with various global climate adaptation leaders through an established academic-governmental partnership to better understand the governing societal influences associated with NBS processes. She will identify governing physical processes through data-driven computational modeling and similarity analyses, including spatial characteristics (watershed properties) and temporal variability (rainfall duration, time of concentration). A top-down approach will be conducted to understand the macro-scale governing processes through the use of bucket models. The process controls on the overall water balance will be extracted from long-term rainfall-runoff signatures and coarse-grained over decreasing scales. Finally, Dr. Castro will investigate the shared behaviors between the bottom-up deterministic models and the top-down bucket models, elucidating where the two approaches overlap, thereby linking NBS processes across scales. By identifying common social and hydrologic factors that are scalable, Dr. Castro seeks a novel description of NBS processes for improved planning across spatial and temporal domains.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.