Collaborative Research: Sustainable Water Infrastructure for Adapting to Coastal Climate Change

该合作项目旨在提高沿海社区应对气候变化可预见影响的可持续性和复原力，如降水加剧、海平面上升和海平面上升导致的地下水上升。核心假设是，可持续和弹性的基础设施来管理沿海地区的供水和洪水，需要明智的决策，旨在(i)通过分散化平衡当地水资源预算来增强可持续性，（ii）增强对复合洪水的抵御能力，其中降水可能与其他淹没源同时发生。对SLR影响的预测将越来越需要考虑SLR与浅海沿岸含水层之间相互联系的洪水，以及典型降水事件下预期的复合洪水。因此，该项目将建立一个机制框架来分析供水基础设施的重要压力源，重点关注弱势社区，并将开发一个分散的模型来增强其可持续性和复原力。该项目旨在系统地了解频繁和长时间尺度的洪水事件对水利基础设施系统的影响，并探索分散式基础设施的可持续性效益，以减轻降水与其他淹没源同时发生的复合淹没影响。项目团队将采用生命周期评估（LCA）技术，并将其与基于地下水位观测的分布式水文建模相结合。综合的LCA框架将通过合并水文学和数据科学的方法来预测水基础设施系统对未来气候变化压力的响应。由于分散系统的成功在很大程度上依赖于对社区在系统实施和操作中面临的障碍的理解，因此本项目旨在通过纳入社区的需求来推进基础设施的可持续性评估。此外，项目团队旨在通过圣地亚哥州立大学（SDSU）的西班牙裔服务机构（HSI）的最大化研究职业机会（MARC）和最大化学生发展计划（IMSD）的招聘计划，积极吸引来自代表性不足群体的学生。该项目将培养1名博士生和2名本科生，他们将分别从事项目的执行和成果的展示，以传播知识。该博士生将被招募到SDSU和UCSD（加州大学圣地亚哥分校）的联合博士项目（JDP），以便能够系统地从这两个机构的研究、教育和咨询资源中受益。此外，该项目还将包括K-12学生的参与，项目团队将为SDSU大学预科学院的STEM探索日提供分散基础设施的研讨会模块，这是350多名代表性不足的初高中学生参与STEM学科的年度活动。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。

This collaborative project seeks to advance the sustainability and resilience of coastal communities against foreseeable impacts of climate change, such as intensified precipitation, sea-level rise (SLR), and SLR-driven groundwater rise. The central hypothesis is that sustainable and resilient infrastructure to manage water supply and flooding in coastal areas requires informed decisions aimed at (i) enhancing sustainability by balancing the local water budget through decentralization and (ii) enhancing resilience against compound flooding in which precipitation may coincide with other inundation sources. Projections of SLR impacts increasingly will need to consider the flooding associated with the interconnections between SLR and shallow coastal aquifers, as well as expected compound flooding under typical precipitation events. Therefore, this project will establish a mechanistic framework to analyze important stressors to water infrastructure, with a focus on disadvantaged communities, and it will develop a decentralized model to enhance their sustainability and resilience.The project aims to systematically understand the impacts of frequent and longer timescale flooding events on water infrastructure systems, and explore the sustainability benefits of decentralized infrastructure to mitigate the compound inundation impacts in which precipitation coincides with other inundation sources. The project team will employ a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique and couple it with distributed hydrologic modeling informed by groundwater table observations. A comprehensive LCA framework will be informed by merging approaches from hydrology and data sciences to forecast the response of water infrastructure systems to future climate change stressors. Because the success of decentralized systems heavily relies on understanding barriers that communities face in system implementation and operation, this project seeks to advance sustainability assessment of infrastructure by incorporating the needs of communities. Additionally, the project team aims to actively engage students from underrepresented groups through recruiting programs with Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) and the Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD) at San Diego State University (SDSU), an Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). This project will train 1 PhD and 2 undergraduate students, each of which will be engaged in performing the project and presenting the outcomes to disseminate the knowledge. The PhD student will be recruited to the Joint Doctoral Program (JDP) between SDSU and UCSD (University of California, San Diego) to be able to systematically benefit from the research, education and advising resources of the two institutions. Furthermore, the project will include K-12 student engagement, where the project team will deliver workshop modules on decentralized infrastructure for the SDSU Pre-College Institute’s STEM Exploration Day, an annual event for over350 underrepresented middle/high school students to engage with STEM disciplines.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.