Planning Grant: ERC for Control of Urban Thermal Environments (CUTE)

工程研究中心的规划赠款竞争是作为ERC计划内的试点招标运行。 规划赠款不需要作为整个ERC竞争的一部分，但旨在建立团队之间的能力，以规划融合的中心规模的工程研究。该规划拨款将为未来的工程研究中心制定精心制定的计划，通过系统开发和部署解决关键技术，社会，政治和经济挑战的热缓解战略，从而实现城市健康和福祉的可量化改善。 该团队提出了一个全面的多学科方法来理解和解决城市热环境面临的新兴挑战。 持续的增长导致越来越多的人为废热来源，这些废热被释放到城市环境中。理解和积极缓解这些影响，以实现持续增长，需要物理和社会科学家、工程师、公共政策专家、城市和区域规划者以及气候学家的参与。 任何新方法的实施都需要与工业、城市管理和广大公众的参与。 目前的努力集中在控制建筑物外墙和人行道的太阳能吸收率，以及种植植被。 模型预测控制和人为热释放的真实的时间缓解尚未以系统的方式尝试，并且将是所提出的多管齐下的努力的重点，以管理热应力和提高城市地区的宜居性。 进行这种融合研究合作的团队将在规划拨款期间使用团队科学方法进行组装，并将涉及具有互补专业知识的大学，国家实验室，工业，市政府和其他利益相关者。 在规划拨款期间，还将制定拟议活动的路线图，包括在具有代表性的城市环境中大规模试验台上对拟议概念进行实验演示。规划活动将有助于开发四个相互关联的重点。 城市热环境的多尺度瞬态建模，包括人为热源的影响，将通过将区域气象模型与实验验证的更高分辨率的微尺度城市区域相结合来实现，以实现实时耦合或前馈模型。 这需要解决与执行这种耦合相关联的多个挑战，例如，模型物理、模型输入和跨尺度参数化的不一致性。 这些模型的能力，近真实的时间热暴露预测将进行探讨。 将探讨各种人为热量管理策略的影响，包括热储存和气流管理。 除了控制人为的废热源外，建筑物、人行道和绿色空间的自适应热特性代表了管理城市热环境的创新机制。一个100万人口的城市的年平均气温可能比周围地区高1-3摄氏度，夜间差异高达12摄氏度。 由于极端高温每年造成的与天气有关的死亡人数超过任何其他形式的极端天气，城市人口受到气温上升的不成比例的影响。城市热岛进一步导致夏季能源使用量增加、空调费用增加、空气污染和温室气体排放增加以及水质退化。 城市空气温度上升的一个关键因素是建筑供暖通风和空调系统、交通系统和工业过程活动的人为热释放，这些活动可以通过城市温度的实时信息来减少热暴露。如果没有积极的减缓战略，城市地区的持续增长将对城市人口的健康和生活质量构成越来越大的挑战，并导致能源需求急剧增长。 拟议的ERC将侧重于开发一个系统框架，以描述和控制城市热环境，加强热浪事件期间的应急响应操作，促进居民的健康和生活质量，该奖项反映了NSF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进行评估，被认为值得支持审查标准。

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. This planning grant will develop well-formulated plans for a future Engineering Research Center that result in quantifiable improvements in health and well-being in cities through the systematic development and deployment of heat-mitigation strategies that address key technological, social, political, and economic challenges. The team proposes a comprehensive multi- disciplinary approach for understanding and addressing the emerging convergent challenges to the urban thermal environment. Continuing growth is resulting in more and larger sources of anthropogenic waste heat, which is released in the urban environment. The understanding and pro-active mitigation of these effects to allow continued growth requires the involvement of physical and social scientists, engineers, public policy experts, city and regional planners, and climatologists. Implementation of any new approaches requires engagement with industry, city administration, and the public at large. Current efforts have focused on controlling the solar absorptivity of building exteriors and pavements, and the planting of vegetation. Model predictive control, and real time mitigation of anthropogenic heat release have not been attempted in a systematic manner, and will be the focus of the proposed multi-pronged effort to manage heat stress and enhance the livability of urban areas. The team to undertake this convergent research collaboration will be assembled during the planning grant using team science approaches, and will involve universities with complementary expertise, national laboratories, industry, city governments, and other stakeholders. During the planning grant, a roadmap for the proposed activities will also be developed, including experimental demonstrations of the proposed concepts in test beds at scale in representative urban environments.The planning activities will help develop four interconnected thrusts. Multi-scale transient modeling of the urban thermal environment, including the effects of anthropogenic heat sources will be achieved by coupling regional meteorological models with experimentally validated finer resolution microscale urban area to achieve real-time coupled, or feed-forward models. This requires addressing the multiple challenges associated with performing this coupling, e.g., inconsistencies in model physics, model inputs, and parameterizations across scales. The ability of these models for near real time heat exposure predictions will be explored. The impact of various strategies for management of anthropogenic heat, including thermal storage, and air flow management will be explored. In addition to controlling anthropogenic sources of waste heat, adaptive thermal properties for buildings, pavements, and green spaces represent an innovative new mechanism for managing the urban thermal environment. The annual mean air temperature of a city of 1 million can be 1-3 degrees Centigrade warmer than its surroundings, with the evening differences as high as 12 degrees Centigrade. With extreme heat accounting for more weather-related deaths each year than any other form of extreme weather, urban populations are disproportionately impacted by rising temperatures. Urban heat islands further result in increased summertime energy usage, higher air-conditioning costs, increased air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as degradation of water quality. A key contributor to the urban air temperature rise is anthropogenic heat release from building heating ventilation and air-conditioning systems, transportation systems, and industrial processes' activities that could be managed to lessen heat exposure with real-time information on temperatures across cities. Without active mitigation strategies, continued growth of urban areas poses increasing health and quality of life challenges for urban populations, as well as sharply growing energy demand. The proposed ERC will focus on developing a systematic framework to characterize and control the urban thermal environments, to enhance emergency response operations during heat wave events, to contribute to the health and quality of life of the inhabitants, and to reduce primary energy consumption.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.