Mid-scale RI-1 (M1:DP): National Full-Scale Testing Infrastructure for Community Hardening in Extreme Wind, Surge, and Wave Events (NICHE)

该奖项全部或部分由2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。该中型研究基础设施-1奖将支持极端风，浪涌和波浪事件（NICHE）中社区加固的国家全尺寸测试基础设施的设计。近几十年来，美国沿海地区的经济、社会和基础设施不断发展，全国40%的人口现在将这些地区称为家园。因此，国家越来越多地受到自然灾害事件的影响，特别是沿着其大西洋和墨西哥湾海岸的飓风。与此同时，该国的内陆与下击暴流和龙卷风作斗争。飓风、下击暴流和龙卷风等极端风暴事件每年都会发生，历史上曾造成社区破坏、民用基础设施受损、人口流离失所和经济损失。对国家社会和资产的风险，特别是对民用基础设施的风险，例如，住宅、建筑物、桥梁和关键的公用事业系统，现在由于人为变暖而增加的危险暴露和海平面上升而变得更加复杂。为了帮助保护国家免受这种极端事件的损失，该项目将设计中型研究基础设施NICHE，它将提供一个独特的，国家规模的，多用户的设施，以实验测试极端风与风暴潮和波浪作用相结合对不同类型的民用基础设施的影响。设想的NICHE响应国家迫切需要通过减少损失，人口流离失所和因气候驱动的灾害而向外迁移，促进更具弹性的社区，使社区能够可持续和公平地发展，以提高生活质量。该设计项目由佛罗里达国际大学（FIU）牵头，这是一所为少数民族服务的机构，参与者包括科罗拉多州立大学、格鲁吉亚理工学院、俄勒冈州州立大学、斯坦福大学、佛罗里达大学、伊利诺伊大学香槟分校、圣母大学、韦恩州立大学和Aerolab LLC。该项目将成为美国国家科学基金会（NSF）支持的自然灾害工程研究基础设施（NHERI）的一个组成部分，并将有助于NSF在国家减少风暴影响计划（NWIRP）中的作用。该项目产生的数据将在NHERI数据库（https：//www.example.com）中存档并公开提供。www.DesignSafe-ci.org NICHE设施将使风和海岸工程研究界能够通过对问题空间的三个维度进行高保真调查，解决因风暴风险增加对民用基础设施的影响而产生的高优先级科学问题，特别是极端风，风暴潮和波浪作用的组合：风灾害（天气和非天气）、海岸灾害（波浪和风暴潮）和建筑环境（例如，从结构到社区规模）。从历史上看，这些研究涉及三种方法：物理实验，计算模拟和实地观察。虽然在每一个方面都取得了相当大的进展，但没有一个能够充分捕捉到受到相互作用的风和海岸灾害的结构的复杂物理特性。现有的实验设施可以分别模拟沿海和风灾害对民用基础设施的影响，错过了推进和验证耦合灾害计算模型的机会。这些设施还缺乏真实再现实践中观察到的灾难性故障和评估潜在缓解解决方案的有效性的物理规模和强度。NICHE设施将被设计为在真实再现建筑环境中的脆弱性所需的尺度上物理模拟耦合气候驱动的危害。为了帮助全尺寸NICHE的设计，该项目将开发和实施一个综合设计试验台（IDT），包括一个原型较小规模的物理设计试验台（PDT）的建设，来自现场观察，计算建模和物理实验的组合。PDT将在FIU建造，风浪PDT组件可能在具有现有波浪测试基础设施的替代机构建造。IDT和原型PDT将为全面的NICHE的后续设计提供信息和孵化，该设计将整合基础和应用研究、研究翻译、学生培训以及更多样化的劳动力队伍的发展。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智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).This Mid-scale Research Infrastructure-1 award will support the design of a National Full-scale Testing Infrastructure for Community Hardening in Extreme Wind, Surge, and Wave Events (NICHE). The United States is experiencing increasing economic, social, and infrastructure development in its coastal areas over recent decades, with 40% of the Nation’s population now calling those areas home. As a result, the Nation is increasingly exposed to natural hazard events, particularly hurricanes along its Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Meanwhile, the country’s interior grapples with downbursts and tornadoes. Extreme windstorm events, such as hurricanes, downbursts, and tornadoes, occur annually and historically have caused community disruption, damaged civil infrastructure, population displacement, and economic losses. The risk to the Nation’s society and assets, especially to civil infrastructure, e.g., residential homes, buildings, bridges, and critical utility systems, is now compounded by increasing hazard exposure and sea level rise due to anthropogenic warming. To help protect the Nation against such extreme event losses, this project will design the mid-scale research infrastructure NICHE, which will provide a unique, national-scale, multi-user facility to experimentally test the impact of extreme winds combined with storm surge and wave actions on different types of civil infrastructure. The envisioned NICHE responds to a pressing national imperative to promote more resilient communities by reducing losses, population displacement, and outmigration due to climate-driven hazards, enabling communities to thrive sustainably and equitably to improve quality of life. This design project is led by Florida International University (FIU), a minority-serving institution, with participation from Colorado State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Oregon State University, Stanford University, University of Florida, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Notre Dame, Wayne State University, and Aerolab LLC. This project will be a component of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) and will contribute to the NSF role in the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP). Data produced by this project will be archived and made publicly available in the NHERI Data Depot (https://www.DesignSafe-ci.org). The NICHE facility will enable the wind and coastal engineering research community to address high-priority scientific questions arising from the impact of increasing storm risks on civil infrastructure, particularly from the combination of extreme winds, storm surge, and wave action, through high-fidelity investigations of the three dimensions of the problem space: wind hazards (synoptic and non-synoptic), coastal hazards (waves and storm surge), and the built environment (e.g., from structures to community scale). Historically, these investigations have engaged a trio of methodological approaches: physical experimentation, computational simulations, and field observations. While considerable advances have been made in each, none has been able to adequately capture the complex physics of structures subjected to interacting wind and coastal hazards. Existing experimental facilities can simulate the impacts of coastal and wind hazards on civil infrastructure separately, missing opportunities to advance and validate computational models for coupled hazards. These facilities further lack the physical scale and intensity to authentically recreate the catastrophic failures observed in practice and assess the efficacy of potential mitigation solutions. The NICHE facility will be designed to physically simulate coupled climate-driven hazards at the scales required to faithfully reproduce vulnerabilities in the built environment. To aid in the design of the full-scale NICHE, the project will develop and implement an integrated design testbed (IDT), including construction of a prototype smaller-scale, physical design testbed (PDT), derived from a combination of field observations, computational modeling, and physical experimentation. The PDT will be constructed at FIU, with the potential for the wind-wave PDT component to be constructed at an alternate institution with an existing wave testing infrastructure. The IDT, and the prototype PDT, will inform and incubate the follow-on design of the full-scale NICHE, that will integrate basic and applied research, research translation, student training, and development of a more diverse workforce.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.