CAS-Climate: Crowd-Sourced Just-in-Time Inlet Maintenance as an Urban Strategy for Climate Resilience

本研究将探讨在基础设施投资日益分散的时代，城市居民有目的地参与城市排水系统的维护，是否可以显著提高基础设施系统的性能。研究团队将在两个不同的城市开展一项实验，在开发一款新的移动应用程序的帮助下，在预测降水事件之前，鼓励群众对雨水渠和绿色基础设施（GI）入口进行清洁。前提是，入口条件在很大程度上决定了雨水管理基础设施捕获的支流地区径流的百分比，从而也决定了雨水系统的功能容量。洪水的关键决定因素和城市抵御极端降水能力的指标。推动这项工作的第一个假设是，如果在降水发生之前立即清除碎片，现有的雨水渠和GI实践可以以更高的效率运行，并且这种及时的维护可以可靠地进行群众外包，从而增加现有雨水渠和GI实践在减少常规和极端降水径流方面的价值。其次，建议更有效地捕获径流的雨水渠和入口将被周围社区视为更有利和接受，而不是其他相同设计的部分或全部被碎片阻塞的基础设施。该研究将a)描述城市排水基础设施（包括地理标志）在一系列降水和集水区条件下管理雨水的能力；b)试点一项战略，让付费公民科学家有意义地参与分散式基础设施系统的运营；c)开发一款融合多种数据集（例如，通过网络服务提供的气候数据、众包照片和工作指令）的应用程序。支付)以一种独特且潜在重要的方式将环境和人类子系统耦合起来；d)调查公众在各种情况下对城市排水系统的看法；e)潜在地改善智慧城市规划和实施；f)通过社区参与加强社会基础设施；g)推进城市雨水、可持续水管理、物联网（IoT）技术、城市管理、环境监测和数据融合领域的知识。通过关注如何提高现有城市排水系统的性能，研究的目标是建设城市适应能力，促进面对气候变化的可持续性和弹性。这项工作的地理重点是新泽西州卡姆登的克莱默山地区，这是一个极易发生洪水的社区，大多数居民来自代表性不足的少数民族，35%的居民生活在贫困线以下。纽约市的研究地点在地理上分布在整个城市，其中大多数位于与卡姆登具有相似民族，种族和经济特征的社区。更广泛的影响包括：a)帮助雨水公用事业公司制定在极端降水期间发挥作用的入口和GI设计和维护协议；b)评估GI和现有雨水基础设施帮助适应极端降水的能力上限；c)改善公众对GI的认识；d)创建一个新的模式，通过分散的基础设施维护帮助城市居民创造收入。研究不同天气和自然条件下的城市排水系统、维护制度和社会参与形式，将对工程、生态学和城市规划的研究人员有价值。将公民科学家纳入数据收集将有助于评估社区管理员在分布式基础设施运营和维护中的潜在作用，这对环境管理和智慧城市发展具有重大意义。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The research will explore the possibility that in an era of increasingly decentralized infrastructure investments, urban residents purposefully engaged in maintenance of urban drainage systems can significantly enhance infrastructure system performance. Working in two different cities, the research team will execute an experiment in which crowd-sourced cleaning of storm drains and green infrastructure (GI) inlets is incentivized in advance of forecasted precipitation events, aided by development of a new mobile app. The premise is that inlet conditions largely determine the percentage of tributary area runoff that is captured by stormwater management infrastructure, and thus also the functional capacity of the stormwater system, a key determinant of flooding and indicator of urban resilience to extreme precipitation. The first hypothesis motivating the work is that existing storm drains and GI practices can be operated at higher efficiency if debris is removed immediately before precipitation occurs, and that this kind of just-in-time maintenance can be reliably crowd-sourced, increasing the value of existing storm drains and GI practices for attenuating runoff from both routine and extreme precipitation. Secondly, it is proposed that storm drains and inlets that are more efficient at capturing runoff will be viewed more favorably and accepted by the surrounding community than otherwise identically designed infrastructure that is partially or wholly obstructed with debris.The research will a) characterize the ability of urban drainage infrastructure, including GI, to manage stormwater under a range of precipitation and catchment conditions, b) pilot a strategy for meaningful engagement of paid Civic Scientists in the operation of decentralized infrastructure systems, c) develop an app that fuses multiple data sets (e.g. climate data available through web services, crowd-sourced photographs and work orders, payments) coupling environmental and human subsystems in a unique and potentially important way, d) survey public perception of urban drainage systems under a variety of contexts, e) potentially improve smart city planning and implementation, f) strengthen social infrastructure through community engagement, and g) advance knowledge in the fields of urban stormwater, sustainable water management, Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology, urban stewardship, environmental monitoring, and data fusion. By focusing on how to enhance the performance of existing urban drainage systems, the research targets building urban adaptive capacity and promoting sustainability and resilience in the face of climate change. The geographic focus of the work is the Cramer Hill section of Camden, NJ, an extremely flood prone neighborhood in which most of the residents are from underrepresented minority groups and 35% of the residents fall below the poverty line. The NYC research sites are geographically distributed throughout that city, with the majority located in neighborhoods with similar ethnic, racial, and economic characteristics to Camden. Broader impacts include a) helping stormwater utilities generate inlet and GI designs and maintenance protocols that function during extreme precipitation, b) evaluating upper bounds on the ability of GI and existing stormwater infrastructure to help in adapting to extreme precipitation, c) improving public perception of GI, and d) creating a new model for helping urban residents generate income through decentralized infrastructure maintenance. Study of the urban drainage systems under different weather and physical conditions, maintenance regimes, and social participation formats, will be of value to researchers in engineering, ecology, and urban planning. The incorporation of Civic Scientists in data collection will help to evaluate the potential role of community stewards in distributed infrastructure operation and maintenance, of great contemporary interest in environmental management and smart city development.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.