Cross-Disciplinary Workshop: Process-Driven Risk Assessment and Mitigation in the Context of Sustainable Development; Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN; Summer 2005

奖项：CMS-0529898PI: Matthew MauldonInstitution: Virginia TechTitle：“跨学科研讨会：可持续发展背景下的过程驱动风险评估和缓解”摘要：该奖项支持在可持续发展背景下的过程驱动风险评估和缓解主题下，探索和提出工程与地球科学之间研究合作的新兴机会的国家研讨会。研讨会参与者将代表广泛的专业、背景和职业阶段。这次为期三天的研讨会将于2005年夏天由范德比尔特大学主办，其成果将是向美国国家科学基金会和研究界提交一份关于这种合作的科学和社会需求的报告，以及一份优先跨学科研究领域清单。研讨会的主题将集中于过程驱动的系统风险和可靠性的评估，以及系统行为背景下的风险减少和缓解策略。要检查的系统包括自然和设计组件，并且可能需要在时间尺度上对系统行为进行建模，其中工程设计寿命接近地质和地球物理过程的“深层”时间。通过“过程驱动”，我们的目标是超越当前主要基于现有物理和环境条件的系统行为评估方法，而是专注于评估活动过程而不是当前状态的下一代方法和工具，并结合相关时间依赖过程的动态建模来预测未来行为。此外，我们设想将“风险和可靠性”应用于环境和生态系统的健康和功能，以及在传统工程意义上应用于人类和社会风险以及设计系统可靠性。我们认为，某些主题领域可以从工程和地球科学社区之间的交流中立即获益，要么是因为这些社区的联合专业知识可能直接产生进步，要么是因为这些领域涉及目前处于危险中的系统（例如沿海土地和湿地）。更广泛的影响目前迫切需要在工程和地球科学领域发展和加强跨学科的合作努力，这些努力的重点是：(i)在关键领域的合作研究，这些领域的进步和创新需要两个学科的知识和观点；（ii）发展和改善这些社区之间的教育联盟；（iii）将工程和地球科学专业知识联合应用于美国和世界范围内日益增加的社会重要性和复杂性的问题。这种需求的理由是令人信服的。未来几十年，美国和世界范围内预计的人口增长将导致对地球资源（包括可居住空间）的需求达到前所未有的规模，随之而来的是对旨在实现这些资源可持续利用的战略和技术的同样前所未有的需求——平衡资源和栖息地的利用，保护和维护生态系统和人类的长期福祉。这些关切从根本上涉及工程学和地球科学的交叉，并明确指出，需要将这些学科的现有知识和专门知识结合起来，以解决风险、缓解战略和未来发展的可持续性等问题，还需要开发新的思维方式，来思考复杂系统，包括自然系统和工程系统，以及它们在从几分钟到几十年和几个世纪的时间尺度上的耦合行为。

Award: CMS-0529898PI: Matthew MauldonInstitution: Virginia TechTitle: "Cross Disciplinary Workshop: Process Driven Risk Assessment and Mitigation in the Context of Sustainable Development"Abstract:This award supports a national workshop to explore and set forth emerging opportunities for research collaboration between engineering and geoscience under the theme of Process-Driven Risk Assessment and Mitigation in the Context of Sustainable Development. Workshop participants will represent a broad cross-section of specialties, backgrounds and career stages. The product of the three-day workshop, to be hosted by Vanderbilt University during the summer of 2005, will be a report to NSF and the research community on the scientific and societal needs for such collaboration, and a list of priority cross-disciplinary research areas. Intellectual Merit The workshop theme will center on assessments of process-driven system risk and reliability, and on risk reduction and mitigation strategies in the context of system behavior. The systems to be examined involve both natural and designed components and may necessitate modeling of system behavior over time scales wherein engineering design lives approach the "deep" time of geological and geophysical processes. By "process driven" we mean to aim beyond current approaches to assessment of system behavior that are based largely on extant physical and environmental conditions, and instead focus on next-generation methods and tools that assess active processes rather than current state, and incorporate dynamical modeling of relevant time-dependent processes to anticipate future behavior. In addition, we envision "risk and reliability" as being applied to the health and functioning of environmental and ecological systems, as well as being applied in a conventional engineering sense to human and social risks and designed-system reliability. We believe that certain topical areas are poised to gain immediately from exchanges between the engineering and geoscience communities, either because advances are likely to emerge directly from the joint expertise of these communities, or because these areas involve presently at-risk systems (e.g. coastal lands and wetlands).Broader Impacts A pressing need exists to develop and strengthen cooperative cross-disciplinary efforts in the engineering and geoscience communities - efforts that are focused on: (i) collaborative research in key areas where advances and innovations will require the knowledge and perspectives of both disciplines; (ii) developing and improving educational alliances between these communities; and (iii) applying engineering and geoscience expertise jointly to problems of increasing societal importance and complexity, both in the U.S. and worldwide. The reasons for this need are compelling. Projected population growth within the U.S. and worldwide over the next several decades will lead to demands for Earth resources, including habitable space, at unprecedented scales, and with this an equally unprecedented need for strategies and technologies aimed at achieving the sustainable use of these resources - balancing utilization of resources and habitat with their protection and preservation for the long-term well-being of ecological systems and humans alike. These concerns fundamentally involve the intersection of engineering and the geosciences, and point clearly to the need to mesh existing knowledge and expertise of these disciplines in addressing questions of risk, mitigation strategies and sustainability of future development, as well as the need to develop novel ways of thinking about complex systems, natural and engineered, and their coupled behavior over times scales ranging from minutes to decades and centuries.