Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Advancing a Circular Water Economy (ACWa-Econ)

工程研究中心规划奖助金竞赛是作为ERC计划的试点征集活动进行的。计划拨款并不是整个ERC竞赛的一部分，而是旨在建立团队之间的能力，以计划集中的、中心规模的工程研究。到2025年，预计世界上三分之二的人口将生活在水资源紧张的条件下。根据这场水危机对社会的潜在影响，这已被确定为一个巨大的全球风险。美国国家科学基金会的工程研究中心(ERC)计划为高社会效益的工程解决方案提供国家投资，这笔规划拨款将用于将科学家、工程师、行业领袖、社会科学家和企业家聚集在一起，为ERC制定框架，最终在美国和其他地区如何处理和管理水方面取得突破。该项目的潜在好处是：(1)提高各机构和科学/工程界就循环水经济开展有影响力和包容性的研究的能力；(2)提高对增加多样性和在研究企业内营造包容文化的方法的了解；(3)加强以水为重点的研究人员与工业、非营利组织、政府和社区合作伙伴之间的关系，以促进社会影响；以及(4)不同领导和管理方法的团队之间的知识，以及它们的好处和挑战。提供清洁水和制定技术、经济和社会战略，以创造真正的循环水经济，显然是一个具有高度社会效益的领域。为此，我们提出了一系列规划活动，使我们能够围绕解决技术供水和再利用问题的挑战建设能力和包容性文化，同时还应对全球和国家的健康和经济风险--水压力和水再利用。我们将努力把科学家、工程师和计算科学家的专业知识与企业家和社会科学家的视角结合起来。这些活动的核心将是纳入那些因其文化、种族、性别或民族认同而以不同方式看待问题和解决方案的个人，以及与工业、政府和非政府合作伙伴的紧密结合，这些合作伙伴对于实施真正的循环水经济研究至关重要。通过这笔赠款，我们将分享深厚的学科专业知识，共同为未来的研究创造新的假设和焦点，确定包容性文化的关键特征和有效战略，将不同的研究人员、视角和方法纳入大型研究工作，并为大型和多样化的群体确定成功的管理和领导战略。这些活动将建设国家能力，使智能水重复使用成为现实，并促进所有参与努力的人的包容和更好的领导。制定的计划将在技术上站稳脚跟，得到利益相关者的广泛支持，并将纳入避险、经济以及不同的企业和文化“框架”，以促进对水资源压力问题的高影响力解决方案。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已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。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.By the year 2025, two-thirds of the world's population is expected to live under conditions of water-stress. This has been identified as an enormous global risk, based on the potential impact of this water crisis on society. The National Science Foundation's Engineering Research Center (ERC) program provides national investment in engineering solutions for high-impact societal benefit, and this planning grant will be used bring together scientists, engineers, industry leaders, social scientists, and entrepreneurs to develop the framework for an ERC that will ultimately lead to breakthrough on how water is treated and managed in the United States and beyond. The potential benefits of the project are (1) increased capacity within institutions and the scientific/engineering community to perform impactful and inclusive research on the circular water economy, (2) enhanced understanding of methods to increase diversity and create a culture of inclusion within a research enterprise, (3) strengthened relationships between water-focused researchers and the industrial, non-profit, government, and community partners that can facilitate societal impact, and (4) knowledge among the team of different leadership and management approaches and their benefits and challenges. The provision of clean water and the development of strategies--technological, economic, and societal--to create a true circular water economy is clearly an area of high-impact societal benefit. For this reason, we have proposed a series of planning activities that will allow us to build capacity and an inclusive culture around the challenge of solving technical water provision and reuse problems while also addressing the global and national health and economic risks of water stress and water reuse. We will work to incorporate the expertise of scientists, engineers, and computational scientists with the perspective of entrepreneurs and social scientists. Central to these activities will be the inclusion of individuals who, by nature of their cultural, racial, gender, or ethnic identification, see problems and solutions differently, and the tight integration with industrial, governmental, and non-governmental partners that are critical to implementing research into a true circular water economy. Through this grant we will share deep subject-matter expertise, co-create novel hypotheses and focal points for future research, identify critical characteristics of an inclusive culture and effective strategies for including diverse researchers, perspectives, and approaches into a large research effort, and identify successful management and leadership strategies for large and diverse groups. These activities will build national capacity to make smart water reuse a reality, as well as facilitate inclusion and better leadership across all those involved with the effort. The plan that develops will be technically grounded, broadly supported by stakeholders, and will incorporate risk aversion, economics, and different corporate and cultural "frames" to facilitate high-impact solutions to the problem of water-stress.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.