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

EAGER：SAI：SmarTrail：可持续路径管理的基础设施服务框架

• 批准号: 2122080
• 负责人: Donald McCrickard
• 金额: $ 29.94万
• 依托单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-11-01 至 2024-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2122080&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; SAI; SmarTrail; Infrastructure; Services

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.

加强美国基础设施（SAI）是美国国家科学基金会的一个项目，旨在促进以人为本的基础研究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的生活质量改善提供了坚实的基础。强大、可靠和有效的基础设施刺激私营部门的创新，发展经济，创造就业机会，使公共部门提供的服务更有效率，加强社区，促进机会平等，保护自然环境，加强国家安全，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侧重于人类推理和决策、治理以及社会和文化过程的知识如何使有效基础设施的建设和维护成为可能，从而改善生活和社会，并以技术和工程的进步为基础。超过20万英里的步道贯穿美国的保护区，它们是美国交通基础设施的重要组成部分。这些步道不仅连接了各个地方，而且每年为数千万美国人提供了丰富的娱乐机会。他们促进自然欣赏和健康的好处。然而，高步道使用率也带来了负面影响。其中包括对现有步道和露营地的计划外扩建，以及新建步道和露营地。这种扩散可以侵入原始地区，并在自然景观中散布人类排泄物和垃圾。高使用量还会侵蚀土壤，使水质恶化。要想尽量减少这些负面影响，同时又能让人们在徒步旅行中享受时光，一种方法是加强步道基础设施，有意识地满足步道服务的供给和需求。SAI项目为这种强化奠定了基础。具体而言，智能电话和其他数码技术被用于信息系统，以配合长途徒步旅行者的需要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，以理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地面可持续步道基础设施的生态、经济和社会层面的障碍和机遇。它从休闲生态学、人机交互、社会心理学和公共政策等领域借鉴，以减轻游客对保护区的影响，改善游客体验。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。该项目采用混合参与式设计方法，将社交媒体、解释、生态和调查数据整合在一起，以实现这一目标。步道基础设施服务的概念首先从徒步旅行者和保护管理者的角度发展起来。项目的这一阶段旨在了解徒步旅行者想从他们的小径体验中得到什么，以及资源管理者需要什么来保护他们所经过的景观。然后，该项目考察了现有的网络基础设施，如智能手机导航应用程序，在这条路上已经发挥的作用。该项目考虑了徒步旅行者和资源管理人员可以使用的其他数字机会，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共享保护信息。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内的心理和社会体验。该项目的最终目标是开发一个基于应用程序的原型跟踪基础设施消息传递系统，用于实验使用和评估。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。