EAGER: SAI: Developing Effective and Culturally Appropriate Alaskan Housing: Performance metrics for future builds based on an interdisciplinary ethnography of past projects

加强美国基础设施(SAI)是一项NSF计划，旨在刺激以人类为中心的基础性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创新，增长经济，创造就业机会，提高公共部门服务提供效率，加强社区力量，促进机会均等，保护自然环境，增强国家安全，推动美国的领导地位。要实现这些目标，需要来自科学和工程学科的专业知识。SAI重点关注人类推理和决策、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进步的基础上。SAI AIGER奖支持一个由人类学家、教育家、建筑商和工程师组成的跨学科团队，调查阿拉斯加偏远社区过去住房项目的成功和失败。他们正在与当地的研究助理合作，将建筑诊断、当地洞察、社会经济数据和特定于文化的住房设计结合起来。该团队正致力于创建一个可在开放源码平台上使用的设计和发现存储库。这项研究产生的数据将为阿拉斯加未来的基础设施投资提供信息和加强，研究方法将为在数十个社区进行类似的研究调查奠定基础。该项目通过合作研究活动、制造空间活动和社区参与，扩大了对工程的参与。阿拉斯加农村的住房安全危机因气候变化而加剧，最近的大流行加剧了这一危机，给资源紧张的社区带来了巨大的负担。虽然解决这些问题的大规模投资可能即将出现，但显然需要关于阿拉斯加农村住房的尖端研究和丰富的社会数据，以指导未来的项目，避免过去的错误。这一研究项目通过阿拉斯加内外的专家和社区成员的实验性合作来解决这一知识缺失问题，他们正在开发综合技术，并从民族志的角度了解最近的寒冷气候示范住宅对阿拉斯加人的生活体验所产生的基础设施影响。研究小组正在调查两个不同生态区(内陆布鲁克斯山脉和沿海育空-库斯科维姆三角洲)的寒冷气候示范房屋的成功和失败。他们正在将人种学数据与建筑诊断结合起来，使用人为因素和工程方法来评估建筑实践的表现。数据将在在线参与式设计研讨会期间共享和共同分析，参与设计研讨会的专家和社区利益攸关方将投资于阿拉斯加农村住房安全问题。社区方法将揭示住房负担、负担和费用的经验知识，并将收集与阿拉斯加农村住房保障相关的设计后数据。数据还被用于制定符合社区或机构需要的未来建筑项目的业绩衡量标准和指导方针。综上所述，这些材料为最终的设计库提供了内容。最后，在这个项目中开发的综合方法论为检查更多的设计后场地的长期研究奠定了基础。该项目的重点是建筑环境对社区的影响，以及案例研究方法的普适性，不仅在阿拉斯加的其他地区可以复制，而且在美国其他适当的地区也可以复制。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.This SAI EAGER award supports an interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, educators, builders, and engineers investigating the successes and failures of past housing projects in remote Alaskan communities. They are working with local research assistants to combine building diagnostics, local insights, socio-economic data, and culturally specific housing design. The team is working towards the creation of a repository of designs and findings that is available on an open-source platform. The data produced from this study will inform and strengthen future Alaskan infrastructure investments, and the research methods will lay the groundwork for similar research investigations in dozens of communities. The project broadens participation in engineering through collaborative research activities, makerspace activities, and community engagement.The housing security crisis in rural Alaska, exacerbated by climate change and highlighted by the recent pandemic, places immense burdens on resource-strapped communities. While large-scale investments to address these problems may be on the horizon, there is a clear need for cutting-edge research and socially rich data on rural Alaskan housing to guide future projects and avoid mistakes of the past. This research project tackles this knowledge deficit with an experimental collaboration of experts and community members from inside and outside Alaska who are developing integrated techniques and ethnographically informed understandings of the infrastructural impacts that recent cold-climate demonstration homes have on the lived experiences of Alaskans. The research team is investigating the successes and failures of cold-climate demonstration homes in two distinct eco-regions (inland Brooks Range and coastal Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta). They are integrating ethnographic data with building diagnostics using human factors and engineering methods to assess the performance of construction practices. Data will be shared and co-analyzed during online participatory design workshops involving experts and community stakeholders who are invested in rural Alaska housing security issues. The community approach will reveal experiential knowledge of housing affordances, burdens, and expenses, and will result in a collection of post-design data related to housing security in rural Alaska. Data is also being used to develop performance metrics and guidance for future building projects in formats that meet the needs of communities or agencies. Taken together, these materials are providing content for an eventual design repository. Finally, the integrative methodology developed in this project lays the foundation for longer term research examining additional post-design sites. This project’s focus on the effects of the built environment on communities and the generalizability of the methods from the case studies will be replicable not just in other regions of Alaska, but in other appropriate regions of the U.S.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.