SAI: Enhancing Flood Resilience in Coastal Urban Communities

加强美国基础设施（SAI）是NSF的一项计划，旨在促进以人为本的基础和潜在的变革性研究，以加强美国的基础设施。有效的基础设施为社会经济活力和广泛改善生活质量奠定了坚实的基础。强大、可靠和有效的基础设施刺激私营部门创新，促进经济增长，创造就业机会，提高公共部门服务提供的效率，加强社区建设，促进机会平等，保护自然环境，增强国家安全，并推动美国的领导地位。为了实现这些目标，需要来自科学和工程学科的专业知识。SAI专注于人类推理和决策，治理以及社会和文化过程的知识如何使建设和维护有效的基础设施，改善生活和社会，并建立在技术和工程的进步之上。由于气候变化，世界各地的沿海城市面临着与风暴和洪水相关的新频率和强度的风险。在美国尤其如此，由于海平面上升和风暴潮，预计美国将面临高于平均水平的沿海财产和基础设施受损风险。沿海城市需要通过提高物质和社会基础设施的复原力来应对这些挑战。这个SAI项目调查了如何让社区直接参与雨水管理，以帮助使财产和基础设施更具弹性。该研究的一个特别重点是沿海社区如何最好地利用绿色雨水基础设施，自然过程有助于社区更有效地管理雨水。该研究探讨了两种干预措施，以改善传统的雨水基础设施方法。一是增加公民参与基础设施的设计、实施和维护过程（基础设施公民）。这通过利用当地对洪水风险的了解和让更广泛的利益攸关方参与可能的社会解决方案的想象来改善雨水基础设施的设计。另一个是利用绿色雨水基础设施技术的潜力，如雨水花园、生物湿地和绿色滞留/保留盆地。与传统的雨水基础设施相比，这为公民参与创造了更频繁、更实惠和更实质性的机会。该项目融合了人类学、城市设计和土木工程方面的专业知识，包括实地研究、参与式设计工作和德克萨斯州休斯顿三个人口统计学上不同的洪水易发社区的水文影响分析。该项目旨在产生创新的便携式和可操作的城市设计，可以指导休斯顿，德克萨斯州及其他地区的雨水基础设施开发过程。该奖项由社会，行为和经济（SBE）科学理事会，地球科学理事会，该奖项反映了NSF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。

Strengthening American Infrastructure (SAI) is an NSF Program seeking to stimulate human-centered fundamental and potentially transformative research that strengthens America’s infrastructure. Effective infrastructure provides a strong foundation for socioeconomic vitality and broad quality of life improvement. Strong, reliable, and effective infrastructure spurs private-sector innovation, grows the economy, creates jobs, makes public-sector service provision more efficient, strengthens communities, promotes equal opportunity, protects the natural environment, enhances national security, and fuels American leadership. To achieve these goals requires expertise from across the science and engineering disciplines. SAI focuses on how knowledge of human reasoning and decision-making, governance, and social and cultural processes enables the building and maintenance of effective infrastructure that improves lives and society and builds on advances in technology and engineering.Coastal cities across the world face new frequencies and intensities of risk associated with storms and flooding because of a changing climate. This is particularly true in the United States, which is expected to face above-average risks for damage to coastal property and infrastructure driven by sea level rise and storm surge. Coastal cities need to prepare for these challenges by boosting the resilience of both physical and social infrastructures. This SAI project investigates how engaging communities directly in stormwater management could help to make property and infrastructures more resilient. A special focus of the research is how coastal communities can make the best use of green stormwater infrastructure, where natural processes help communities to manage stormwater more effectively.The research explores two interventions to improve upon conventional stormwater infrastructure approaches. One is to increase civic engagement in infrastructural design, implementation, and maintenance processes (infrastructural citizenship). This improves stormwater infrastructure design by harnessing local knowledge of flood risks and engaging a broader range of stakeholders in the imagination of possible social solutions. The other is to utilize the potential of green stormwater infrastructure techniques, such as rain gardens, bioswales, and green detention/retention basins. This creates more frequent, affordable, and substantive opportunities for civic engagement than conventional stormwater infrastructure. With a convergence of expertise in anthropology, urban design, and civil engineering, the project includes field research, participatory design work and hydrological impact analysis in three demographically distinct, flood prone Houston, TX neighborhoods. The project aims to produce innovative portable and actionable urban designs that can guide stormwater infrastructure development processes in Houston, TX and beyond.This award is supported by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Sciences, the Directorate for Geosciences, and the Directorate for Engineering.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.