CIVIC-PG Track A: Smart Kids and Cool Seniors

该项目帮助低收入老年人更好地应对公共住房中高温压力、空气质量差和通风不良等多重威胁。这是新泽西州伊丽莎白市的城市社区和罗格斯大学的研究人员之间的合作。贫穷造成多重压力，限制了青年的机会，并增加了弱势群体面临的累积环境健康风险。解决方案应使这些人和更广泛的社区成员能够更有效地采取行动。因此，该项目将老年人和青年聚集在一起，为公共住房中的弱势青年提供STEM教育计划。这些年轻人和他们的大学合作者将部署一个廉价的传感器网络来测量整个城市的室外环境状况，以及老年人公寓的室内环境状况，并将根据收集到的数据与社区成员实时分享见解，以便他们采取相应的行动。这个项目应该为以下方面建立更坚实的基础：(1)居民行动，以避免暴露于热应力和恶劣的空气质量；(2)社区团体行动，倡导对室外主要空气污染者的监管和室内制冷权；(3)市政行动，优先考虑市政改善；(4)房屋管理局行动，改善公寓楼内的环境条件。该项目在一个网络中部署了大量廉价、中等质量的空气污染物和温度/湿度测量传感器，在固定点网格上实时远程数据检索，并增加了移动传感器——个人暴露监测仪——由陪同老年人在城市中正常旅行的年轻人携带。这所大学的研究团队将创建一个建模平台，监测传感器的性能，根据传感器数据插入当地的环境条件，比较室外和室内条件，并通过手机应用程序、本地电视频道和安装在房屋管理局所有的楼梯间建筑物中的预算外视频显示器，向居民推送可操作的信息和建议。该平台将服务于社区参与过程，将青年和老年人聚集在一起，实现减少老年人累积的环境脆弱性和增加儿童接触STEM知识的共同目标。本项目：(1)关注多层次城市语境中的人的能动性；(2)应用机器学习技术帮助解决传感器质量和覆盖范围之间的预算权衡；(3)将数字孪生策略扩展到室内和室外问题解决；(4)使社区能够确定实际的改进。该项目是对“公民创新挑战”项目（track a）的回应：在不断变化的气候中生活：围绕适应、恢复和缓解的灾前行动——是国家科学基金会、国土安全部和能源部之间的合作项目。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 project helps low-income seniors cope better with the compounding threats of heat stress, poor air quality, and poor ventilation in public housing. It is a collaboration between the urban community of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and researchers at Rutgers University. Poverty imposes multiple stressors that limit opportunities for youth and increase cumulative environmental health risks for vulnerable people. Solutions should empower these people and members of the broader community to act more effectively. Thus, the project brings seniors and youth together for a common purpose in a STEM education program for disadvantaged youth in public housing. The youth and their university collaborators will deploy an inexpensive sensor network to measure environmental conditions outdoors throughout the city, and indoors in seniors’ apartments, and will share insights based on the data collected with community members in real time so that they can act accordingly. This project should build a firmer basis for (1) residential actions to avoid exposure to heat stress and poor air quality, (2) community group actions to advocate for regulation of prominent outdoor air polluters and an indoor right to cooling, (3) municipal actions to prioritize civic improvements, and (4) housing authority actions to improve environmental conditions within apartment buildings. The project deploys a large number of inexpensive, moderate-quality air pollutant and temperature/humidity measurement sensors in a network with real-time remote data retrieval at a grid of fixed points, augmented with mobile sensors—personal exposure monitors—carried by youth accompanying seniors on their normal trips around the city. The university research team will create a modeling platform that monitors sensor performance, interpolates local environmental conditions based on the sensor data, compares outdoor and indoor conditions, and pushes actionable information and recommendations to residents by means of cellphone apps, a local-access TV channel, and video displays being installed off-budget in stairwells buildings owned by the housing authority. This platform will serve a community engagement process that brings youth and seniors together around the common goals of reducing seniors’ cumulative environmental vulnerabilities and increasing children’s exposure to STEM knowledge. The project: (1) focuses on human agency in the multi-level urban context; (2) applies machine learning techniques to help solve budgeting tradeoffs between sensor quality and coverage; (3) extends digital twinning strategies to handle both indoor and outdoor problem solving; and (4) empowers communities to identify realistic improvements.This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program—Track A. Living in a changing climate: pre-disaster action around adaptation, resilience, and mitigation—and is a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy.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.