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

这一合作项目旨在提高沿海社区抵御气候变化可预见影响的可持续性和复原力，这些影响包括降水加剧、海平面上升和由海平面上升引起的地下水上升。中心假设是，管理沿海地区供水和洪灾的可持续和有弹性的基础设施需要作出明智的决定，目的是：(1)通过权力下放平衡当地的水收支来增强可持续性；(2)增强抵御复合洪灾的能力，在这种情况下，降水可能与其他淹没来源同时发生。对SLR影响的预测将越来越需要考虑与SLR和浅海含水层之间的相互联系相关的洪灾，以及在典型降水事件下预期的复合洪灾。因此，该项目将建立一个机制框架，以分析水利基础设施的重要压力来源，重点放在弱势社区，并将开发一个分散模型，以增强其可持续性和复原力。该项目旨在系统地了解频繁和更长时间尺度的洪水事件对水利基础设施系统的影响，并探索分散基础设施的可持续效益，以缓解降雨量与其他淹没来源重合的复合淹没影响。项目组将采用生命周期评估(LCA)技术，并将其与由地下水位观测提供信息的分布式水文模型结合起来。将水文学和数据科学的方法结合起来，以预测水利基础设施系统对未来气候变化压力的反应，从而形成一个全面的生命周期评估框架。由于分散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了解，该项目寻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，项目团队旨在通过最大限度地获得研究职业机会(MARC)的招生计划和圣地亚哥州立大学(SDSU)的最大化学生发展倡议(IMSD)，积极吸引来自代表性不足群体的学生，SDSU是一家西班牙裔服务机构(HSI)。该项目将培养1名博士和2名本科生，每个人都将参与执行该项目并展示成果以传播知识。这名博士生将被南加州州立大学和加州大学圣地亚哥分校(UCSD)的联合博士项目(JDP)录取，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，该项目将包括K-12学生参与，项目团队将为SDSU预科学院的STEM探索日提供关于分散基础设施的研讨会模块，STEM探索日是一个年度活动，有超过350名代表不足的初中生/高中生参与STEM纪律。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 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.