SAI: Enhancing Flood Resilience in Coastal Urban Communities

加强美国基础设施（SAI）是美国国家科学基金会的一个项目，旨在促进以人为本的基础研究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的生活质量改善提供了坚实的基础。强大、可靠和有效的基础设施刺激私营部门的创新，发展经济，创造就业机会，使公共部门提供的服务更有效率，加强社区，促进机会平等，保护自然环境，加强国家安全，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侧重于人类推理和决策、治理以及社会和文化过程的知识如何使有效的基础设施的建设和维护能够改善生活和社会，并以技术和工程的进步为基础。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，美国预计将面临沿海财产和基础设施受损的风险高于平均水平。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，从而使财产和基础设施更具弹性。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，在那里自然过程可以帮助社区更有效地管理雨水。该研究探索了两种干预措施，以改进传统的雨水基础设施方法。一是增加基础设施设计、实施和维护过程中的公民参与（基础设施公民）。通过利用当地对洪水风险的了解，并让更广泛的利益相关者参与到可能的社会解决方案中来，这改善了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、生物威尔士和绿色滞留/滞留盆地。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、更实质性的机会。该项目汇集了人类学、城市设计和土木工程方面的专业知识，包括实地研究、参与式设计工作和水文影响分析，研究对象是德克萨斯州休斯顿三个人口统计学上不同、易发生洪水的社区。该项目旨在产生创新的便携式和可操作的城市设计，可以指导德克萨斯州休斯顿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、地球科学理事会和工程理事会支持。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。

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.