Global Centers Track 2: Enabling interdisciplinary wildfire research for community resilience

在美国西部，与气候变化相关的最重要的后果之一是野火频率和规模的迅速增加。在过去的二十年里，野火越来越多地从荒地转移到人类社区。这些野火对社区的影响包括民用基础设施的损失和破坏。由于全球经济的互联性和基础设施系统之间的依赖性日益增强，这些损失和损害变得越来越复杂。全球中心第二轨道设计奖旨在建立一个国际性的跨学科中心，帮助解决社会挑战，减轻、适应和从野火对物理、社会和经济基础设施的影响中恢复过来。应对野火的累积影响，包括对社会和经济系统的影响，需要跨越学科和司法界限，需要社会、经济和技术部门之间的合作。奖励活动旨在建立科学和社区能力，包括情景构建、社区参与、培训和劳动力发展。该奖项由美国俄勒冈州立大学、俄勒冈大学和华盛顿大学与澳大利亚和英国的多所大学合作设立。该项目将填补在减少基础设施损失风险的方法以及土地管理机构、地方政府和居民采取缓解行动的多重障碍方面的知识空白。它将通过使用基于场景的练习，并考虑工程方面（如材料特性）、数据驱动的决策框架、火灾后激光雷达数据以及对社区基础设施的多灾害影响，促进知识的共同生产。这项研究的结果将推进或确定研究问题，以进一步了解野火对相关基础设施系统、社区以及自然、文化、社会、政治、金融和建筑环境的影响。这些联系的识别将导致转型趋同研究愿景的发展，这将在第1轨道提案中概述。这一研究愿景将(i)确定野火对特定部门的影响，以及它们之间的联系和相互依存关系；（二）开发说明此类影响的模型，并评估缓解、应对和恢复战略；（三）确定利用传感技术量化社区内的火灾需求的机会，并利用传感数据验证建模方法。这些联系的识别也将促进跨学科科学家和工程师团队对荒地和城市界面的进一步研究发展。该奖项由全球中心项目资助，该项目是一个创新项目，支持以使用为灵感的研究，解决与气候变化和/或清洁能源相关的全球挑战。Track 2设计奖支持美国的研究人员将国际团队聚集在一起，开发研究问题和合作伙伴关系，进行景观分析，综合数据，和/或建立多方利益相关者网络，以推进他们未来更大规模的使用灵感研究。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。

One of the most consequential climate change-related outcomes in the western US is the rapid increase in wildfire frequency and size. Over the last two decades, wildfires increasingly have moved from wildlands into human communities. The impacts of these wildfires on communities includes losses of and damages to civil infrastructure. These losses and damages have become increasingly complex due to the increasing interconnectedness of the global economy and dependencies among infrastructure systems. This Global Centers Track 2 Design award aims to develop an international, interdisciplinary center that will contribute to solving societal challenges to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from the effects of wildfires on physical, social, and economic infrastructure. Addressing the cumulative effects of wildfires, including those on social and economic systems, crosses disciplines and jurisdictional boundaries and requires collaboration among social, economic, and technical sectors. Award activities are designed to build scientific and community capacity and include scenario building, community engagement, and training and workforce development. The award is a partnership among Oregon State University, University of Oregon, and University of Washington in the U.S. with multiple universities in Australia and the United Kingdom. This project would fill gaps in knowledge of methods for reducing the risk of infrastructure losses and the multiple barriers to mitigation actions by land management agencies, local government, and residents. It will foster a co-production of knowledge by using scenario-based exercise and considering engineering aspects (e.g., material properties), data-driven decision-making framework, post-fire Lidar data, and multi-hazard impacts on community infrastructure. The results of this research will advance or identify research questions to further knowledge of wildfire impacts on connected infrastructure systems, communities, and natural, cultural, social, political, financial, and built environments. The identification of these connections will lead to the development of a transformational convergent research vision, which will be outlined in a Track 1 proposal. This research vision will (i) identify sector-specific impacts of wildfires, as well as their connections and interdependencies; (ii) develop models that illustrate such impacts and evaluate mitigation, response, and recovery strategies, and (iii) identify opportunities to engage sensing technology to quantify fire demands within communities and use sensing data to validate modeling methodologies. The identification of these connections will also enable further research development on the wildland urban interface by groups of interdisciplinary scientists and engineers. This award is funded by the Global Centers program, an innovative program that supports use-inspired research addressing global challenges related to climate change and/or clean energy. Track 2 design awards support U.S.-based researchers to bring together international teams to develop research questions and partnerships, conduct landscape analyses, synthesize data, and/or build multi-stakeholder networks to advance their use-inspired research at larger scale in the future.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.