CREST Center for Geospatial and Environmental Informatics, Modeling and Simulation

科学技术卓越研究中心（CREST）计划通过建立有效整合教育和研究的中心，支持提高为少数民族服务的机构的研究能力。CREST促进了新知识的发展，提高了个别教师的研究生产力，扩大了在科学、技术、工程和数学学科中历史上代表性不足的学生的存在。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，德克萨斯农工大学科珀斯克里斯蒂分校建立了地理空间与环境信息学、建模与仿真中心。不断增长的人口需求、风暴的威胁和海洋侵蚀使沿海社区处于工程和科学努力的前沿，以减少脆弱性，实现长期繁荣。提高沿海复原力是为应对日益不确定的沿海环境做好准备的一种成本效益高的方法。该中心开发的建模和模拟能力将指导社区更快地从灾害事件中恢复过来，并减少对人类健康、环境和经济的负面影响。该中心将招募和支持代表性不足的少数民族学生攻读STEM领域的学位，重点是沿海复原力，并扩大大学的教育和研究能力。该中心阐明了三个研究子项目，通过开发将遥感和自主遥感与地理空间计算、人工智能/深度学习和大数据分析相结合的新方法，在不同尺度上对沿海地区进行综合监测，以应对沿海恢复能力的挑战。重点是提高对极端沿海灾害以及偶发性和持续性事件（如飓风和海平面上升）的抵御能力。子项目1开发将遥感和自主传感与地理空间计算和人工智能相结合的新方法，以改善沿海地区监测和弹性决策。它生成详细而准确的地理信息系统数据，用于描述建筑环境和自然环境。子项目2通过综合表征、模拟和评估，有助于了解城市水循环和水基础设施的恢复能力。子项目3研究如何将新兴的数据源和先进的地理空间计算应用于评估、协助和改善灾害后沿海社区的物质、行为和社会健康。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。

The Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST) program supports the enhancement of research capabilities of minority-serving institutions through the establishment of centers that effectively integrate education and research. CREST promotes the development of new knowledge, enhancements of the research productivity of individual faculty, and an expanded presence of students historically underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. With National Science Foundation support, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi establishes the Center for Geospatial and Environmental Informatics, Modeling and Simulation. Growing population demands, threats from storms, and sea encroachment put coastal communities at the forefront of engineering and scientific efforts to reduce vulnerabilities for their long-term prosperity. Improving coastal resilience is a cost-effective approach to prepare for increasingly uncertain coastal environments. The modeling and simulation capabilities developed by the Center will provide guidance to communities to rebound more quickly from a disaster event and to reduce negative human health, environmental, and economic impacts. The Center will recruit and support underrepresented minority students to pursue degrees in STEM fields with a focus on coastal resilience and expand the university’s education and research capacity. The Center articulates three research subprojects addressing the challenges of coastal resilience by developing new approaches that integrate remote and autonomous sensing with geospatial computing, Artificial Intelligence/deep learning, and big data analytics for comprehensive coastal zone monitoring at different scales. The focus is on improving resiliency to extreme coastal hazards and episodic and persistent events (e.g., hurricane and sea-level rise). Subproject 1 develops new approaches integrating remote and autonomous sensing with geospatial computing and artificial intelligence to improve coastal zone monitoring and resiliency decision-making. It generates detailed and accurate geographic information systems data for characterization of the built and natural environment. Subproject 2 contributes to the understanding of the urban water cycle and the resilience of water infrastructure through integrated characterization, simulation, and assessments. Subproject 3 investigates how emerging data sources and advanced geospatial computing can be applied to evaluate, assist, and improve a coastal community’s physical, behavioral, and social health after disasters.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.