CIVIC-FA Track A: Leveraging existing fiber-optic cables to identify and manage urban environmental hazards

发展中的城市面临许多重大挑战，包括基础设施老化、缺乏应对气候变化的应变能力，以及人类获得城市服务和便利设施方面的不平等。基础设施的恶化，加上更加频繁的极端天气，导致了重大的城市事件，如慢性洪水、地面沉降和与污染有关的灾害。虽然许多环境问题与地质地下变化有关，但缺乏实时监测系统。城市需要具有成本效益的工具来预测、预防和减轻灾害。该项目旨在使用宾夕法尼亚州匹兹堡现有的光缆开发实时、高分辨率的监测框架，该市拥有百年或更老的给水和下水道管道，以及记录在案的山体滑坡、天坑和地面沉降历史。更广泛的影响包括改善城市供水和雨水和/或废水系统的性能。该项目还可以帮助城市确定条件恶化最严重的地点并确定优先顺序，以便更有针对性地更换与水有关的基础设施，特别是在选定的研究区域包括弱势社区的情况下。该项目还包括教育、劳动力培训和公共宣传部分。通过匹兹堡儿童博物馆的公众宣传将提高人们对新传感器技术和民用基础设施的认识。社区的长期复原力将得到改善，匹兹堡社区和其他社区将大大受益，在这些社区，雨水将成为全球气候变化日益重要的问题。宾夕法尼亚州立大学和卡内基梅隆大学的研究人员、匹兹堡城市和基础设施经理、电信公司、当地社区和其他利益相关者将开展该项目。公民合作伙伴包括匹兹堡给水和下水道管理局、匹兹堡市和DQE通信有限责任公司。公民创新挑战赛是与能源部、国土安全部和国家科学基金会合作的项目。该项目将测试和演示使用预先存在的、未使用的光缆，以高空间和时间分辨率以实时到接近实时的方式低成本地监测多种城市供水基础设施和地球物理灾害。确定了两个领域来测试用作城市基础设施环境传感器的光纤电缆的可行性。选定的区域是其他传感器可以临时放置以收集数据以进行校准的路线。收集的数据与民间伙伴提供的地质环境危害信息(如洪水报告、山体滑坡倾向性)将用于验证和校准从系统安装收到的信号。项目成果包括制定最佳做法，利用光纤技术对城市环境中的水基础设施和地球物理灾害进行具有成本效益的、可扩展的、高分辨率的实时监测。传感器和基础设施校准程序将为未来在其他城市的应用而开发。这项研究和实施如果成功，将具有变革性，因为该技术可重复和可扩展，并有可能被其他城市广泛采用。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。

Growing cities face many major challenges including aging infrastructure, a lack of resilience against climate change, and inequities across human access to city services and amenities. Deteriorating infrastructure, coupled with more frequent, extreme weather, results in major urban events, such as chronic flooding, land subsidence, and pollution-related hazards. Real-time monitoring systems are lacking although many environmental issues are related to geological subsurface changes. Cities need cost-effective tools to predict, prevent, and mitigate hazards. This project aims to develop a real-time, high-resolution monitoring framework using pre-existing fiber-optic cable in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which has century-old or older water and sewer pipelines, and a documented history of landslides, sinkholes, and ground subsidence. Broader impacts include improved performance of city water and storm and/or wastewater systems. The project can also help cities identify and prioritize locations where conditions have most deteriorated, allowing more targeted replacement of water-related infrastructure, especially as the selected research area includes disadvantaged communities. The project also involves educational, workforce training, and public outreach components. Public outreach through the Children’s Museum in Pittsburgh will increase awareness about new sensor technology and civil infrastructure. Long-term community resilience will be improved, substantially benefitting the Pittsburgh community, and other communities where stormwater will be an increasingly important issue with global climate change. Pennsylvania State University and Carnegie Mellon University researchers, Pittsburgh city and infrastructure managers, telecommunication companies, local communities, and other stakeholders will conduct the project. Civic partners include Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, the City of Pittsburgh, and DQE Communications LLC. The CIVIC Innovation Challenge is a collaboration with Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Science Foundation. This project will test and demonstrate the use of pre-existing, unused, fiber-optic cables to monitor multiple urban-water infrastructures and geophysical hazards at low cost in real- to near real-time manner with high spatial and temporal resolution. Two areas were identified to test the viability of fiber-optic cables for use as urban-infrastructure environmental sensors. Selected areas are routes where other sensors can be located temporarily to collect data for calibration. The collected data combined with geo-environmental hazard information from civic partners (e.g., flooding reports, landslide proneness) will be used to validate and calibrate signals received from the system installation. Project outcomes include development of best practices for using fiber-optic technology to provide cost-effective, scalable, high-resolution, real-time sensing of water infrastructure and geophysical hazards in an urban environment. Sensor and infrastructure calibration procedures will be developed for future applications in other cities. This research and implementation, if successful, is transformative because the technology is repeatable and scalable and has the potential to be adopted widely by other cities.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.