Center: IUCRC Site Addition WPI: Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center (WIRC)

中心：IUCRC 站点扩建 WPI：野火跨学科研究中心 (WIRC)

• 批准号: 2333294
• 负责人: Albert Simeoni
• 金额: $ 45万
• 依托单位: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2026-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2333294&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Center; IUCRC; Site; Addition; WPI

In the United States, the adjusted impacts of wildfires exceeded $100 B over the past 22 years. A community resilient to wildland fires can prepare for anticipated scenarios, take mitigating actions, adapt to changing conditions, minimize losses during the response to an event, and rapidly recover. Scientists with San José State University Wildfire Interdisciplinary Center (WIRC), an Industry University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC), are working together with Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researchers to holistically investigate wildfires. Broader impacts include improved response to wildfires, especially in the areas of decision making; determining risk; ensuring reliable electrical grid operations and informing decisions on grid cutoff; minimizing loss of life and property; and providing more effective warnings and prognostication to populations living in areas susceptible to wildfire. The Center is training the STEM workforce to become fire managers, city planners, fire analysts, and fire meteorologists. The collaboration will increase the numbers of students trained in wildfire research, diversify the types of training students receive, and increase student’s potential for internships from a broader group of companies. Both institutions will conduct active outreach using their campus programs to increase the diversity of trained students. Finally, the partnership extends the reach of WIRC to the east coast where fire frequency and extreme fires are also increasing. Collectively, the Center is conducting high-impact wildfire research to provide new predictive tools and strategies to communities and industry stakeholders, including first responders, risk analysts, policymakers, companies, and utilities. By partnering with WPI, a new IUCRC Partner Site to WIRC, the collective team will address several key topics synergistic with the Center’s ongoing wildfire prediction, preparation, and prevention efforts. For example, WPI adds critical research depth to address human safety and community resilience to wildfire, including fire safety at the wildland-urban interface; small-scale fire behavior; fire impact at the fire-front level; fire protection systems, and firefighter safety. Improvements in understanding of fire spread through different layers of vegetation, the characterization of firebrands produced by a fire-burning vegetation or structure, the generation of reliable fire behavior data used to train AI models, and the study of the fundamental fire-front level processes to drive extreme fire behavior are critically needed to improve our ability to understand and model wildfire. Because of its emphasis on fire protection, WPI will study new fire detection methods, robotics solutions to enhance first responders’ safety, and fire suppression systems for wildfires. Its state-of-the-art Fire Protection Lab provides equipment to conduct experiments, enabling researchers to extract fundamental measurements of fire ignition and conflagration.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.

在美国，野火的调整影响在过去22年里超过了1000亿美元。一个对荒地火灾有弹性的社区可以为预期的情景做好准备，采取缓解措施，适应不断变化的条件，最大限度地减少事件响应期间的损失，并迅速恢复。圣何塞州立大学野火跨学科中心(WIRC)、工业大学合作研究中心(IUCRC)的科学家正在与伍斯特理工学院(WPI)的研究人员合作，对野火进行全面调查。更广泛的影响包括改进对野火的反应，特别是在决策领域；确定风险；确保可靠的电网运行并为切断电网的决策提供信息；最大限度地减少生命和财产损失；以及向生活在易受野火影响地区的人口提供更有效的警告和预测。该中心正在培训STEM工作人员，使其成为消防经理、城市规划者、消防分析师和火灾气象学家。这一合作将增加接受野火研究培训的学生数量，使学生接受的培训类型多样化，并增加学生从更广泛的公司集团实习的潜力。这两所大学都将利用其校园项目积极开展外联活动，以增加受过培训的学生的多样性。最后，该伙伴关系将WIRC的覆盖范围扩展到东海岸，那里的火灾频率和极端火灾也在增加。总体而言，该中心正在进行高影响力的野火研究，为社区和行业利益相关者提供新的预测工具和战略，包括急救人员、风险分析师、政策制定者、公司和公用事业公司。通过与WIRC的一个新的IUCRC合作网站WPI合作，集体团队将解决与该中心正在进行的野火预测、准备和预防工作相协同的几个关键主题。例如，WPI增加了关键的研究深度，以解决人类安全和社区对野火的适应能力，包括荒地-城市交界处的消防安全；小规模火灾行为；火灾前线层面的火灾影响；消防系统和消防员安全。为了提高我们理解和模拟野火的能力，迫切需要改进对通过不同植被层传播的火的理解，对燃烧火的植被或结构产生的火焰斑点的表征，生成用于训练人工智能模型的可靠的火灾行为数据，以及研究驱动极端火灾行为的基本火灾前沿水平过程。由于重视消防，WPI将研究新的火灾探测方法、提高急救人员安全的机器人解决方案以及野火灭火系统。其最先进的消防实验室提供进行实验的设备，使研究人员能够提取火灾点火和火灾的基本测量。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。