EAGER: SAI: SmarTrail: An Infrastructure Services Framework for Sustainable Trail Management

加强美国基础设施（SAI）是NSF的一项计划，旨在促进以人为本的基础和潜在的变革性研究，以加强美国的基础设施。有效的基础设施为社会经济活力和广泛改善生活质量奠定了坚实的基础。强大、可靠和有效的基础设施刺激私营部门创新，促进经济增长，创造就业机会，提高公共部门服务提供的效率，加强社区建设，促进机会平等，保护自然环境，增强国家安全，并推动美国的领导地位。为了实现这些目标，需要来自科学和工程学科的专业知识。SAI专注于人类推理和决策，治理以及社会和文化过程的知识如何使有效的基础设施的建设和维护，改善生活和社会，并建立在技术和工程的进步。超过200，000英里的步行小径穿过美国的保护区，它们代表了该国交通基础设施的重要组成部分。 这些步道不仅连接各地，每年还为数千万美国人提供丰富的娱乐机会。他们促进自然欣赏和健康的好处。然而，高步道使用也带来了负面影响。这些措施包括对现有小径和露营地的无计划扩张，以及新建小径和露营地。这种扩散可能侵入原始地区，并将人类废物和垃圾散布到自然景观中。大量使用还会侵蚀土壤，降低水质。一种方法，以尽量减少这些负面影响，同时仍然允许人们享受他们的时间在线索是通过加强线索基础设施，故意服务的供应和需求的线索服务。这个最高审计机关项目为这种加强奠定了基础。 具体而言，在信息系统中使用智能手机和其他数字技术，以满足长途徒步旅行者的需求和保护区的保护目标。这将数字信息流与空间，社会，心理和文化维度相结合，以了解和改善步道环境之外的基础设施性能。该研究旨在阐明利用数字技术解决实地可持续道路基础设施的生态，经济和社会方面的障碍和机会。它借鉴了休闲生态学、人机交互、社会心理学和公共政策等领域的知识，以减轻游客对保护区的影响，改善游客在保护区的体验。智能、可持续的步道基础设施管理需要跨多个技术平台整合空间、社会、心理和生态信息。该项目通过使用混合方法参与式设计方法来实现这一目标，该方法集成了社交媒体，解释性，生态和调查数据。首先从徒步旅行者和保护管理者的角度提出了步道基础设施服务的概念。该项目的这一阶段旨在了解徒步旅行者希望从他们的步道体验中获得什么，以及资源管理人员需要保护他们所经过的景观。然后，该项目研究了现有的网络基础设施，如智能手机导航应用程序，已经在这条道路上发挥的作用。该项目考虑了可能提供给徒步旅行者和资源管理者的额外数字机会，以使用徒步旅行者的位置信息，并在徒步旅行社区中以数字方式分享保护信息。确定了长途徒步旅行者运动的空间，社会认知和行为方面，以了解数字技术如何调节保护区的心理和社会体验。该项目的最终目标是开发一个基于应用程序的试验基础设施消息传递系统的原型，以供实验使用和评估。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知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Strengthening American Infrastructure (SAI) is an NSF Program seeking to stimulate human-centered fundamental and potentially transformative research that strengthens America’s infrastructure. Effective infrastructure provides a strong foundation for socioeconomic vitality and broad quality of life improvement. Strong, reliable, and effective infrastructure spurs private-sector innovation, grows the economy, creates jobs, makes public-sector service provision more efficient, strengthens communities, promotes equal opportunity, protects the natural environment, enhances national security, and fuels American leadership. To achieve these goals requires expertise from across the science and engineering disciplines. SAI focuses on how knowledge of human reasoning and decision making, governance, and social and cultural processes enables the building and maintenance of effective infrastructure that improves lives and society and builds on advances in technology and engineering.More than 200,000 miles of foot trails thread through protected areas in the U.S. They represent an important piece of the country’s transportation infrastructure. Not only do these trails connect places, they also provide abundant recreation opportunities for tens of millions of Americans every year. They promote nature appreciation and health benefits as well. Yet, high trail use also brings negative impacts. These include the unplanned expansion of existing trails and campsites, and the creation of new ones. Such proliferation can invade pristine areas and spread human waste and garbage across natural landscapes. The high use also can erode soils that degrade water quality. One means to minimize these negative impacts while still allowing people to enjoy their time on the trail is by strengthening trail infrastructure to deliberately serve both the supply of and demand for trail services. This SAI project lays the groundwork for such strengthening. Specifically, smart phone and other digital technologies are used in an information system to match long distance hikers’ needs with conservation objectives in protected areas. This blends digital information flows with spatial, social, psychological, and cultural dimensions to understand and improve infrastructure performance beyond the trail environment. The research aims to illuminate the barriers and opportunities to using digital technologies to address the ecological, economic, and social dimensions of sustainable trail infrastructure on the ground. It draws from the fields of recreation ecology, human-computer-interaction, social psychology, and public policy to mitigate visitor impacts and improve visitor experiences in protected areas.Smart, sustainable trail infrastructure management requires the integration of spatial, social, psychological, and ecological information across multiple technological platforms. This project pursues that aim by using a mixed method participatory design approach that integrates social media, interpretive, ecological, and survey data. The concept of trail infrastructure services from both the hiker and conservation managers perspectives is first developed. This phase of the project seeks to understand what hikers want from their trail experiences and what resource managers need to conserve the landscapes through which they pass. The project then examines the role that existing cyber infrastructure, such as smart phone navigation apps, already play on the trail. This project considers additional digital opportunities that might be available to hikers and to resource managers to use information on the location of hikers and to share conservation messages digitally across the hiking community. The spatial, socio-cognitive, and behavioral aspects of long distance hikers’ movements are identified to understand how digital technologies mediate psychological and social experiences in protected areas. The ultimate aim of the project is the development of a prototype app-based trail infrastructure messaging system for experimental use and evaluation.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.