CAREER: Integrating Resilience and Social Vulnerability into the Management of Civil Infrastructure Systems

这个教师早期职业发展（Career）项目将促进我们对社会经济因素对基础设施中断对不同人群的不同影响的影响的理解。由于收入/阶层、年龄、健康状况和残疾等社会脆弱性因素，自然灾害对关键民用基础设施系统造成的损害对不同人群的影响是不同的。然而，在现有的弹性评估方法中，通常不考虑这种不成比例的影响。因此，基于现有方法的基础设施管理决策忽视了社区中最弱势群体的不同需求。该项目将明确将社会脆弱性因素纳入基础设施复原力模型，以便在改善复原力的决策过程中充分考虑社区中最脆弱人群的需求。该奖项还将支持一项教育计划，培养多样化的未来土木工程师群体，以应对建筑环境面临的挑战，并为他们提供成为有效决策者所需的知识。该项目的社区外展部分将提高人们对自然灾害对基础设施系统影响相关问题的认识，并激励社区支持提高抗灾能力的政策。该项目的主要研究目标是制定综合社会脆弱性因素的基础设施复原力模型和指标，以指导灾前复原力改善和灾后恢复规划。具体研究目标包括：(i)制定一个新的弹性评估模型和考虑社会脆弱性的系统性能指标，（ii）创建一个多标准决策框架来指导弹性改进，（iii）为灾后恢复规划制定一个多目标弹性驱动的优化模型，以及（iv）使用试验台评估新方法，以评估其为灾前弹性改进和灾后恢复规划提供信息的能力。新方法将超越目前的复原力模型，考虑到社会脆弱性。该项目还将提供新的基于弹性的组件重要性指标，以帮助确定应作为弹性改进行动重点的基础设施组件。此外，还将获得关于各种恢复力改善措施有效性的新知识，这将为选择适当措施的决策提供信息。此外，该项目将有助于确保决策者意识到基础设施系统中断所带来的社会不平等。这种意识是确保基础设施管理者在基础设施系统的设计、运营和管理中明确考虑社会脆弱性的第一步。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。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project will advance our understanding of the influence of socioeconomic factors on differential impacts of infrastructure disruptions to different populations. The impact of the damage caused by natural hazards to critical civil infrastructure systems differs for various population groups because of social-vulnerability factors such as income/class, age, health status, and disability. However, such disproportionate impacts are typically not considered in existing resilience assessment methods. Consequently, infrastructure-management decisions based on the existing methods ignore the differing needs of the most vulnerable populations in communities. This project will explicitly integrate social-vulnerability factors into infrastructure resilience models so that the needs of the most vulnerable populations in communities can be adequately considered in resilience improvement decision-making processes. The award will also support an educational program to train a diverse group of future civil engineers to tackle the challenges faced by the built environment and provide them with the knowledge they need to be effective decision-makers. The community outreach component of the project will increase awareness of issues related to the impact of natural hazards on infrastructure systems and motivate communities to support resilience-improvement policies.The primary research goal of the project is to formulate infrastructure-resilience models and metrics that integrate social-vulnerability factors to guide pre-disaster resilience improvement and post-disaster recovery planning. Specific research objectives include: (i) formulate a new resilience assessment model and system-performance metrics considering social vulnerability, (ii) create a multi-criteria decision-making framework to guide resilience improvement, (iii) formulate a multi-objective resilience-driven optimization model for post-disaster recovery planning, and (iv) evaluate the new methods using testbeds to appraise their ability to inform pre-disaster resilience improvement and post-disaster recovery planning. The new methods will go beyond current resilience models by considering social vulnerability. The project will also provide new resilience-based component-importance metrics to help identify infrastructure components that should be the focus of resilience-improvement actions. Additionally, new knowledge about the effectiveness of various resilience-improvement measures will be gained, which will inform decisions on selecting appropriate measures. Further, the project will help ensure that decision-makers are aware of the social inequities brought by disruptions to infrastructure systems. Such awareness is the first step in ensuring that infrastructure managers explicitly consider social vulnerability in infrastructure systems’ design, operation, and management.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.