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

不断发展的城市面临着许多重大挑战，包括基础设施老化，缺乏应对气候变化的能力，以及人类获得城市服务和设施的不平等。日益恶化的基础设施，加上更加频繁的极端天气，导致重大的城市事件，如长期洪水，地面沉降和污染相关的危害。虽然许多环境问题与地下地质变化有关，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。该项目旨在利用宾夕法尼亚州匹兹堡市现有的光纤电缆开发一个实时、高分辨率的监测框架，匹兹堡市拥有百年或更老的供水和下水道管道，以及有记录的滑坡、天坑和地面沉降历史。更广泛的影响包括改善城市供水和暴雨和/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区并确定其优先顺序，从而能够更有针对性地更换与水有关的基础设施，特别是因为选定的研究领域包括弱势社区。该项目还涉及教育、劳动力培训和公共宣传等内容。通过匹兹堡儿童博物馆进行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。长期的社区复原力将得到改善，大大有利于匹兹堡社区和其他社区，在这些社区，雨水将成为全球气候变化的一个日益重要的问题。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管理人员、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水务和下水道管理局、匹兹堡市和DQE通信有限责任公司。CIVIC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举办的。该项目将测试和演示如何使用现有的、未使用的光纤电缆，以低成本、高空间和时间分辨率、真实的至接近实时的方式监测多个城市水基础设施和地球物理灾害。确定了两个领域来测试光纤电缆作为城市基础设施环境传感器的可行性。所选区域是其他传感器可以临时定位以收集用于校准的数据的路线。收集的数据与来自民间合作伙伴（例如，水浸报告，山泥倾泻倾向）将用于验证和校准从系统装置接收到的信号。项目成果包括开发使用光纤技术的最佳实践，以提供对城市环境中的水基础设施和地球物理灾害的具有成本效益、可扩展、高分辨率的实时感测。传感器和基础设施的校准程序将被开发，以备将来在其他城市应用。这项研究和实施，如果成功，是变革性的，因为该技术是可重复和可扩展的，并有潜力被其他城市广泛采用。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的评估使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

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.