Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Agricultural and Rural Connectivity (ARC)

工程研究中心的规划赠款竞争是作为ERC计划内的试点招标运行。规划赠款不需要作为整个ERC竞争的一部分，但旨在建立团队之间的能力，以规划融合的，中心规模的工程研究。2400万美国人中有80%没有高速互联网生活在农村地区。缺乏宽带接入严重限制了农村居民的生活质量，是在气候变化和人口不断增长的情况下全球农业资源潜在冲突的主要根源。城乡数字鸿沟一般归因于人口密度低导致缺乏经济激励措施。随着农村社区人口密度的下降，农业领域的连接设备密度稳步增加。因此，我们可能会目睹农田和农村城镇之间新的数字鸿沟的演变，而过时的政策阻碍了新型网络架构的实现。因此，现有的农业实践受到以前的连接技术的限制（并因此被定义），这些技术不是针对农田的独特特征而设计的。农业和农村连通性工程研究中心（ARC）将联合工程师，计算机科学家，农学家和动物科学家，社会科学家，教育/推广专家，工业，市政当局，政府机构和社区利益相关者，以弥合城乡数字鸿沟。ARC将设计新颖的农村连接架构和解决方案，提高农村社区的数字素养，以扩大和利用连接解决方案，扩大服务不足和代表性不足的农村社区在工程研究和开发中的参与，并利用蓬勃发展的硅草原生态系统将研究解决方案与商业企业联系起来。ARC将推进基础研究，提供劳动力培训，并培育应对农村社区连通性挑战所需的创新生态系统。其多元化的团队将确定农村连接（社会）的经济驱动因素和政策限制，相关的农村用例（科学界）和相应的连接要求（工程界）-所有这些都是为了解决关键的现实问题。ARC认识到，没有任何一种现有的无线技术可以解决农村宽带连接问题。因此，这项计划拨款汇集了农业物联网，车载网络，无人机通信，农业机器人和精确牲畜管理方面的各种专业知识，专注于五个主要的融合研究方向：1）农场作为锚机构架构，联合收割机结合无线技术，经济学，电信法和农业科学的专业知识，以实现农村农业，卫生，教育和基础设施的突破。2)敏捷的技术转移，在研发的同时持续集成新的通信解决方案。3)农业机器人取代大马力拖拉机，提高生产力，同时减少对环境的负面影响。4)移动的连接架构，可实现广泛的高速覆盖。5)精确的动物管理，以帮助动物护理与动物销售的时间，并提高动物健康和福祉问题的检测。通过弥合数字鸿沟，这些趋同的研究方向将通过连接农村城镇、学校、医院、农田、牧场、道路和桥梁，刺激农村繁荣，提高粮食安全。ARC团队将利用ERC规划补助金完成一系列旨在加强与本地服务机构和农村社区学院（DCI）的合作关系的活动，制定全面的工程劳动力发展计划（EWD），维护和扩大现有的利益相关者社区，以实现多元化和包容性的愿景（DCI/IE/EWD），明确聚合研究方向（CR），加强ARC领导和核心团队（CR/DCI/EWD/IE）。为此，一系列的务虚会将汇集来自公共，私人和学术部门的不同利益相关者社区，沿着工程学生团体，所有这些人都将融入中心的活动。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为值得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来支持。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.Eighty percent of the 24 million Americans without high-speed Internet live in rural areas. This lack of broadband access severely limits the quality of life for rural residents and is a major source for potential global conflict over agricultural resources in the face of climate change and a growing population. The urban-rural digital divide is generally attributed to a lack of economic incentives resulting from low population density. As the population density in rural communities decreases, the density of connected devices in agricultural fields steadily increases. As a result, we are likely witnessing the evolution of a new digital gap between farm fields and rural towns exacerbated by outdated policy that prevents the realization of novel network architectures. As such, existing agricultural practices are limited (and therefore defined) by previous connectivity technologies, which were not designed for the unique characteristics of agricultural fields. The Engineering Research Center for Agricultural and Rural Connectivity (ARC) will unite engineers, computer scientists, agronomists and animal scientists, social scientists, education/outreach specialists, industry, municipalities, government agencies, and community stakeholders to bridge the urban/rural digital divide. ARC will engineer novel rural connectivity architectures and solutions, enhance rural communities' digital literacy to expand and utilize connectivity solutions, broaden participation of underserved and underrepresented rural communities in engineering research and development, and leverage a blossoming Silicon Prairie ecosystem to connect research solutions with commercial enterprises. ARC will advance fundamental research, provide workforce training, and foster the innovation ecosystem required to answer the connectivity challenges of rural communities. Its diverse team will identify economic drivers and policy constraints for rural connectivity (society), associated rural use cases (scientific community), and corresponding connectivity requirements (engineering community) – all toward solving critical real-world problems. ARC recognizes that no single existing wireless technology can solve rural broadband connectivity issues. Therefore, this planning grant brings together diverse expertise in agricultural Internet of Things, vehicular networking, UAV communications, agricultural robotics, and precision livestock management to focus on five primary convergent research directions:1) Farm as an Anchor Institution architectures that combine expertise in wireless technologies, economics, telecom law, and agricultural sciences to enable breakthroughs in rural agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure. 2) Agile technology transfer for continuous integration of new communication solutions in parallel with research and development. 3) Agricultural robotics to replace high-horse-power tractors and boost productivity while reducing negative impacts on the environment. 4) Mobile connectivity architectures for extensive high-speed coverage. 5) Precision animal management to aid animal caretaking with the timing of animal marketing and improve detection of animal health and well-being concerns. By bridging the digital divide, these convergent research directions will stimulate rural prosperity and improve food security by connecting rural towns, schools, hospitals, farm fields, ranches, roads, and bridges. The ARC team will use the ERC planning grant to complete a series of activities designed to enhance partnerships with native-serving institutions and rural community colleges (DCI), develop a comprehensive engineering workforce development program (EWD), maintain and expand the existing stakeholder community toward a diverse and inclusive vision (DCI/IE/EWD), crystallize convergent research directions (CR), and enhance the ARC leadership and core team (CR/DCI/EWD/IE). To this end, a series of retreats will bring together a diverse stakeholder community from public, private, and academic sectors, along with an engineering student body, all of whom will be integrated into the center's activities.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.