SAI: Integrating Equity in Emergency Management of Critical Infrastructure

加强美国基础设施(SAI)是一项NSF计划，旨在刺激以人类为中心的基础性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创新，增长经济，创造就业机会，提高公共部门服务提供效率，加强社区力量，促进机会均等，保护自然环境，增强国家安全，推动美国的领导地位。要实现这些目标，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能够建立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进步的基础上。每年，美国的野火都会导致许多人死亡，带来巨大的经济损失。随着气候的变化和人口中心的转移，野火造成的频率和危害预计会增加。野火是对关键基础设施系统的重大威胁。农村和处境不利的社区往往最容易受到野火灾害的影响，这使这些挑战更加复杂。尽管在预测野火传播方面取得了重大进展，但人们对野火、社会弱势群体和应急管理做法之间的复杂相互作用知之甚少。这个SAI项目的重点是加强关键基础设施系统的应急管理，特别注意野火造成的不成比例的社会影响。具体地说，该项目将社会科学理论与数学模型相结合，为设计和改进关键基础设施系统的应急管理提供了新的见解。我们的目标是开发一个新的评估框架和综合决策模型，以加强对此类系统的以人为本的治理。这一领域的一个关键挑战是理解基本服务，如电力、水和交通，在面临野火时可能会由于它们之间的强烈相互依存而失败。另一个重大挑战是，居住在荒地和城市地区交界处的社会弱势社区的需求往往看不到。因此，野火导致的关键基础设施故障对这些社区的不成比例的影响在应急规划和实践中没有得到充分的考虑。这个SAI项目旨在开发一个以人为中心、以股权为重点、了解风险的决策框架，以应对这些挑战。该研究开发了与深度不确定性下相互依赖的关键基础设施系统的脆弱性评估和有效的野火后恢复策略相关的公平感知和可解释的模型和计算算法。它还评估了野火导致的关键基础设施服务中断对农村和弱势社区的社会负担，并将其有效地与新的应急管理决策模型相结合。该项目汇集了社会科学、工程学和公共政策研究人员网络中的专业知识和资源，以及来自多个机构、公共和私人机构、非营利组织和当地社区的利益相关者。该奖项得到了社会、行为和经济委员会(SBE)和数学和物理科学委员会的支持。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力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.Every year, wildfires in the United States cause many deaths and bring enormous economic loss. The frequency and harm caused by wildfires are projected to grow with changes in the climate and shifting population centers. Wildfires represent a significant threat to critical infrastructure systems. These challenges are compounded by the observation that rural and disadvantaged communities are often the most susceptible to wildfire disasters. Although significant progress has been made in predicting wildfire propagation, less is known about the complex interactions between wildfires, socially vulnerable populations, and emergency management practices. This SAI project focuses on strengthening the emergency management of critical infrastructure systems, with special attention to the disproportionate societal impacts of wildfires. Specifically, this project integrates social scientific theories with mathematical models to yield novel insights into the design and improvement of emergency management of critical infrastructure systems. The goal is to develop a new assessment framework and an integrative decision model that enhances the human-centered governance of such systems.One critical challenge in this area is understanding how essential services, such as electricity, water, and transportation, might fail due to their strong interdependencies when facing a wildfire. Another major challenge is that the needs of socially vulnerable communities residing at the interface between wildlands and urban areas are often unseen. As a result, the disproportionate impacts of wildfire-induced critical infrastructure failures on these communities are not adequately considered in emergency planning and practices. This SAI project aims to develop a human-centered, equity-focused, risk-informed decision-making framework to address these challenges. The research develops equity-aware and interpretable models and computational algorithms related to vulnerability assessment and efficient post-wildfire recovery strategies of interdependent critical infrastructure systems under deep uncertainties. It also evaluates the social burden of wildfire-induced critical infrastructure service disruptions on rural and disadvantaged communities and effectively integrates it with the new emergency management decision model. The project brings together expertise and resources from a network of researchers in the social sciences, engineering, and public policy, along with stakeholders from multiple institutions, public and private agencies, non-profit organizations, and local communities.This award is supported by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Sciences and the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences.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.