Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Wildfire Hazard Resilience and Risk Engineering (WiRE)

野火不断烧毁我们社区的物质、社会、经济和卫生结构，让我们不堪重负，这种常年灾害的破坏性规模和后果令我们不堪重负。最近的野火事件吹响了号角，要求推进、开发和实施基于科学的技术解决方案，以增强野火的复原力。不幸的是，目前相关领域的研究和教育工作--在组织和科学领域的重点方面--都是孤立的，需要将目前相互脱节的工作整合为一个统一的整体。受几十年自然灾害工程经验的启发，拟议的野火灾害复原力和风险工程ERC(WIRE)旨在推进和汇聚科学领域，为野火危险工程开发一种基于风险和复原力的研究基础设施。通过让利益相关者社区、问题所有者和行业合作伙伴参与，我们设想将综合科学研究转变为实用的基于工程的技术解决方案，用于野火危险的预测、缓解、响应和恢复。ERC愿景要求将风险工程和复原力、火灾科学、气候科学、自然科学、计算和数据科学、传感器和机器人、系统工程、社会科学、环境科学、经济和金融以及公共卫生和政策学科的思维模式融合在一起。ERC的主要成果将是(I)野火风险管理和复原力的融合工程解决方案框架，(Ii)面向融合整体的特定领域重点领域的新科学知识，(Iii)用于多尺度概率野火和WUI火灾风险管理的综合开源计算平台，以及(Iv)开发新的野火工程课程和教育计划，以交叉培训未来的劳动力。迈向这一愿景的第一步是勾勒出野火危险领域的相互关联的属性，并协调多学科的思维模式，以寻求一个融合的解决方案，本ERC规划拨款将针对这一问题。规划拨款将吸引广泛的学者和利益相关者网络，以促进我们对野火危险的多维问题领域的理解。多学科领域知识的融合将照亮科学研究进步、技术开发、以用户为中心的实施和教育计划的路线图，这些将通过Wire ERC执行。这项计划拨款的目标是(I)确定痛点、研究差距和解决方案需求，(Ii)制定协作和融合的科学研究和技术开发计划，(Iii)招募领域领导人并组建分领域研究小组，以及(Iv)扩大和吸收更广泛的利益相关者社区。规划拨款的执行从一系列联合研究-利益相关者虚拟咖啡电话开始，以确定问题领域。虚拟电话会议的结果将是一份研究和技术开发计划草案。然后，我们将组织一个带有分组会议的研讨会，以汇聚和完善研究和技术开发计划，并确定关键的领域领导者和利益相关者联系。研讨会之后，将举行一系列联合领域领导者的虚拟咖啡时间电话会议，以制定ERC的范围和行动计划。最后，ERC的建议将通过几个写作小组来创建。这一奖项反映了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。

Wildfires keep scorching the physical, social, economic, and health fabric of our communities, leaving us overwhelmed with the devastating scale and consequences of this perennial hazard. The recent wildfire events have been a clarion call for advancing, developing, and implementing science-based technological solutions to enhance wildfire resilience. Unfortunately, the present research and educational efforts in relevant fields are currently siloed—both in terms of organizational and scientific domain focus—, demanding the integration of the presently disconnected efforts into a unified whole. Inspired by decades of experience in natural hazard engineering, the proposed ERC on Wildfire hazard Resilience and risk Engineering (WiRE) aims to advance and converge the scientific domains to develop a paradigm-shifting risk- and resilience-based research infrastructure for wildfire hazard engineering. Through engaging stakeholder communities, problem owners, and industry partners, we envision the transformation of integrated scientific research into practical engineering-based technology solutions for wildfire hazard prediction, mitigation, response, and recovery.The ERC vision requires a convergence of thinking modalities from risk engineering and resilience, fire science, climate science, natural science, computation and data science, sensors and robotics, system engineering, social science, environmental science, economics and finance, and public health and policy disciplines. Primary deliverables of the ERC will be (i) a convergent engineering solution framework for wildfire risk management and resilience, (ii) new scientific knowledge in domain-specific focus areas towards the convergent whole, (iii) an integrated open-source computational platform for multi-scale probabilistic wild- and WUI-fire risk management, and (iv) development of new wildfire engineering curriculum and educational plans to cross-train the future workforce. The first step towards this vision is to delineate the coupled attributes of the wildfire hazard domain and orchestrate the multi-disciplinary thinking modalities towards a convergent solution, which the present ERC planning grant will address.The planning grant will engage a broad network of academics and stakeholders to advance our understanding of the multi-dimensional problem domain of wildfire hazards. The convergence of multi-disciplinary domain knowledge will illuminate the roadmap for scientific research advancement, technology development, user-centric implementation, and educational plan, which will be executed through the WiRE ERC. The objectives of this planning grant are to (i) identify pain points, research gaps, and solution needs, (ii) develop a collaborative and convergent scientific research and technology development plan, (iii) recruit domain leaders and form subdomain research squads, and (iv) outreach and onboard broader stakeholder community. The planning grant execution starts with a series of joint research-stakeholder virtual coffee calls to identify the problem domain. The outcome of the virtual calls will be a draft of research and technology development plans. We will then organize a workshop with breakout sessions to converge and refine the research and technology development plans and identify key domain leaders and stakeholder liaisons. The workshop will be followed by a series of joint domain-leader virtual coffee-hour calls to craft the ERC scope and action plan. Finally, the ERC proposal will be created through several write-shops.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.