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

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。这项中等规模的研究基础设施-1奖将支持设计一个国家全面测试基础设施，用于极端风、浪和浪事件中的社区硬化(NICE)。近几十年来，美国沿海地区的经济、社会和基础设施发展不断加快，全国40%的人口现在将这些地区作为家。因此，该国越来越多地受到自然灾害事件的影响，特别是大西洋和墨西哥湾沿岸的飓风。与此同时，这个国家的内陆地区正在努力应对暴风雨和龙卷风。飓风、下暴流和龙卷风等极端风暴事件每年都会发生，历史上曾造成社区混乱、民用基础设施受损、人口流离失所和经济损失。国家的社会和资产，特别是民用基础设施，如住宅、建筑物、桥梁和关键的公用事业系统面临的风险，现在由于人为变暖而增加的危险暴露和海平面上升而加剧。为了帮助保护国家免受这种极端事件的损失，该项目将设计中等规模的研究基础设施，它将提供一个独特的、全国性的、多用户设施，以试验性地测试极端风与风暴潮和海浪联合作用对不同类型的民用基础设施的影响。设想的利基市场是对国家迫切需要的回应，即通过减少因气候驱动的灾害造成的损失、人口流离失所和外流，促进更具弹性的社区，使社区能够可持续和公平地蓬勃发展，以提高生活质量。这个设计项目由佛罗里达国际大学(FIU)牵头，这是一家为少数族裔服务的机构，参与的机构包括科罗拉多州立大学、佐治亚理工学院、俄勒冈州立大学、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。该项目将是国家科学基金会(NSF)支持的自然灾害工程研究基础设施(NHERI)的一部分，并将为NSF在国家减少风暴影响计划(NWIRP)中的作用做出贡献。该项目产生的数据将被存档，并在国家医疗保险研究所数据仓库(https://www.DesignSafe-ci.org).)公开可用该利基设施将使风和沿海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度优先的科学问题，特别是极端风、风暴潮和波浪作用的组合：风危害(天气和非天气)、沿海危害(海浪和风暴潮)和建筑环境(例如，从结构到社区规模)。从历史上看，这些研究采用了三种方法：物理实验、计算模拟和现场观察。虽然在这两个方面都取得了相当大的进展，但没有一个能够充分地捕捉到受风和沿海灾害相互作用的结构的复杂物理学。现有的实验设施可以单独模拟沿海和风力灾害对民用基础设施的影响，错失了推进和验证耦合灾害计算模型的机会。这些设施进一步缺乏实际规模和强度，无法真实再现在实践中观察到的灾难性故障，并评估潜在缓解解决方案的效力。这个利基设施将被设计成在物理上模拟气候驱动的耦合灾害，所需的规模是忠实地再现建成环境中的脆弱性。为了帮助设计全尺寸的生态位，该项目将开发和实施一个综合设计试验台(IDT)，包括建造一个由现场观测、计算建模和物理实验组合而成的较小规模的物理设计试验台(PDT)原型。PDT将在FIU建造，风浪PDT组件有可能在具有现有海浪测试基础设施的替代机构建造。IDT和原型PDT将提供信息并孵化全面利基的后续设计，该利基将整合基础和应用研究、研究翻译、学生培训和开发更多样化的劳动力。该奖项反映了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。

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.