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

该合作项目旨在提高沿海社区的可持续性和抵御气候变化可预见影响的能力，如降水加剧，海平面上升（SLR）和SLR驱动的地下水上升。核心假设是，管理沿海地区供水和洪水的可持续和有复原力的基础设施需要做出明智的决定，目的是：（i）通过权力下放平衡当地水资源预算，提高可持续性;（ii）提高对复合洪水的复原力，在复合洪水中，降水可能与其他洪水来源重合。对SLR影响的预测将越来越需要考虑与SLR和沿海浅层含水层之间的相互联系相关的洪水，以及典型降水事件下的预期复合洪水。因此，本项目将建立一个机制框架来分析水利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提高其可持续性和弹性。本项目旨在系统地了解频繁和较长时间尺度的洪水事件对水利基础设施系统的影响，并探讨分散式基础设施的可持续性效益，以减轻降水与其他洪水来源同时发生的复合洪水影响。该项目团队将采用生命周期评估（LCA）技术，并将其与地下水位观测所提供的分布式水文模型相结合。一个全面的生命周期评估框架将通过融合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源的反应。由于分散式系统的成功在很大程度上取决于对社区在系统实施和运作中面临的障碍的理解，因此本项目力求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，该项目小组的目标是积极参与学生从代表性不足的群体通过招聘计划与最大限度地获得研究职业（MARC）和最大限度地提高学生发展（IMSD）在圣地亚哥州立大学（SDSU），西班牙裔服务机构（HSI）的倡议。本项目将培养1名博士生和2名本科生，他们将参与执行项目并展示成果以传播知识。博士生将被招募到SDSU和UCSD（加州大学圣地亚哥分校）之间的联合博士课程（JDP），以便能够系统地从两个机构的研究，教育和咨询资源中受益。此外，该项目将包括K-12学生参与，项目团队将为SDSU大学预科学院的STEM探索日提供关于分散式基础设施的研讨会模块，这是一个为350多名代表性不足的中/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进行评估来支持和更广泛的影响审查标准。

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.