Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Intelligent Infrastructure for Safe, Efficient and Resilient Mobility (ERC-I2SERM)

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。 ERC竞赛不需要规划赠款，但旨在培养团队规划融合的中心规模工程研究的能力。该规划补助金奖项支持工程研究中心（ERC）的设计，专注于潜在的变革性科学和工程研究，承诺使我们的道路更安全，更可靠，更高效，更环保可持续。这项研究将促进我们旅行和提供商品和服务的方式的转变。 公路不仅是国民经济的命脉，而且影响到社会生活的各个领域。 下一代交通基础设施必须具备足够的容量，使其能够随着需求的增长而增长，并应对新兴的互联、自动化和共享汽车技术。它还应能抵抗干扰，能够抵御各种区域自然灾害。最后，它必须美观，对环境的影响可以忽略不计，并使用最少的资源。 这些相互关联的需求为基于新材料、传感和自动化的智能交通基础设施的新时代提供了机遇，并与世界进行了更多的互动。 我们设想未来的高速公路和道路系统将广泛利用尖端（智能）材料、智能和适应性强的基础设施、智能交通系统和物理指导的数据科学，以实现安全、弹性和效率。 这样的智能基础设施将能够感知、解释并与其环境进行真实的实时交互。这允许预测和调整外部刺激，如交通和极端事件造成的刺激。 规划补助金活动将提供一个平台，用于识别关键技术挑战、潜在解决方案假设以及将导致形成最有效ERC的学科贡献。为了确定弹性交通基础设施的关键技术挑战，规划团队将与利益相关者和领域专家深入合作。这将通过专门的研讨会，小组讨论和团队建设务虚会来完成。 这些参与的结果将成为微调技术专题和协调各核心领域研究议程以及确定各学科之间联系的基础。 预期的结果将是确定一套关键的研究问题和一个广泛而收敛的研究计划。这使得在这个设想的多大学中心的结构和角色的明确定义。这些规划活动还将确定该中心将能够从地理角度代表不同的机构，服务的学生类型（包括少数民族学生）以及他们在主要大都市地区或附近的位置。 计划中的利益相关者参与，研讨会和务虚会预计将影响学术研究人员对这些社会挑战的看法，以及利益相关者（例如，工业创新者、政策制定者、公民）对科学研究的看法。 规划活动还将吸引研究生和本科生参与，为他们提供新兴的跨学科研究机会。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.This planning grant award supports the design of an Engineering Research Center (ERC) focused upon potentially transformative science and engineering research that promises to make our roadways safer, more reliable, more efficient, and more environmentally sustainable. This research will stimulate the transformation of the way we travel and deliver goods and services. Roadways and highways are not only national economic lifelines but impact every sphere of societal activities. Next generation transportation infrastructure must have sufficient capacity, making it able to grow with the increasing demand and address the emerging connected, automated and shared vehicle technologies. It should also be resistant to interruptions, able to withstand all manner of regional natural hazards. Finally, it must be aesthetic, have negligible environmental impact, and use minimal resources. These interrelated demands present an opportunity for a new era of intelligent transportation infrastructure based on new materials, sensing and automation, and greater interactions with the world. We imagine future highway and roadway systems which extensively utilize cutting-edge (smart) materials, smart and adaptable infrastructure, smart transportation systems and physics-guided data science to achieve safety, resiliency, and efficiency. Such an intelligent infrastructure will be able to sense, interpret and interact in real time with its environment. This allows for anticipation and adjustment to external stimuli, such as those posed by traffic and extreme events. The planning grant activities will provide the platform for identification of key technical challenges, their potential solution hypotheses, and the disciplinary contributions that will lead to formation of the most effective ERC. To identify key technical challenges to resilient transportation infrastructure, the planning team will engage deeply with stakeholders and domain experts. This will be done through a dedicated workshop, panel discussion(s) and a team building retreat. The results of these engagements will form the basis for fine tuning the technical topics and coordination of the research agenda across the core areas and to define the linkages among the disciplines. The expected outcome will be identification of a set of critical research issues and a broad yet convergent research program. This allows for a clear definition of the structure and roles within this envisioned multi-university center. These planning activities will also define the ways the center will be able to represent diverse institutions from the viewpoint of geography, types of students served (including minority students) as well as their location in or near major metropolitan areas. The planned stakeholder engagement, workshop, and retreat are expected to impact the outlook of academic investigators towards these societal challenges, as well as how the stakeholders (e.g., industrial innovators, policymakers, citizens) perceive scientific research. The planning activities will also engage graduate and undergraduate students to provide them exposure to emerging transdisciplinary research opportunities.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.