Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for REstorative infrastructure through Convergent Engineering and Psychology (RE‐CEP)

工程研究中心规划拨款竞赛是ERC项目的试点征集。规划补助金不需要作为ERC竞赛的一部分，但它旨在在团队之间建立能力，以规划聚合的、中心规模的工程研究。我们的基础设施影响着每个人，甚至是那些从不使用它的人。建筑和道路是我们花费大部分时间的地方，也是美国和全球大部分能源使用和相关排放的来源。该项目通过结合工程学和心理学的新方法来追求变革性的基础设施改进。新方法有望提供不完全依赖物质资源的解决方案，后者的成本往往低于纯粹的技术反应，而且可以更快地从研究转化为实践。除了更好的基础设施，这个项目将工程学和心理学结合起来，有望在三个方面产生社会影响。首先，通过工程劳动力的发展，不仅要让工程师更好地为当前的工程工作做好准备，还要扩大工程专业学生准备的工作类型。第二，通过多元化和包容文化，扩大那些认为自己有潜力成为工程师的人群，并吸引更多元化的潜在工程师群体。第三，通过嵌入式行业合作伙伴关系建立创新生态系统，这是该项目的核心。该项目旨在规划一个ERC，设想通过基础设施提供的服务（如住房、交通和水），不仅可以减少对环境的负面影响，还可以创造积极的影响。这种恢复性基础设施解决了工程方面的重大挑战，并支持了全球发展目标。然而，恢复性基础设施是难以捉摸的，这在很大程度上是因为它需要对技术和社会系统的综合理解，因此也需要对工程学和心理学的综合理解。潜在的ERC将在这些学科之间进行融合研究，重点是确定创建恢复性基础设施的障碍和机会。项目核心团队汇集了工程师和心理学家、学者和实践者，他们已经在一起进行恢复性基础设施的融合研究。这个计划拨款将帮助核心团队成熟这些独特的现有关系，并将团队形成扩展到更大的利益相关者社区。该团队计划通过嵌入式研究驻地来促进工程劳动力的发展，研究人员可以与项目合作伙伴一起在自然环境中研究基本问题。核心团队将通过与ideas42行为峰会（2018年10月，纽约）和工程可持续性会议（2019年4月，匹兹堡）一起举行的现场规划讨论会，确定并填补学科和实践专业知识方面的空白。在面对面会议的基础上，每两周一次的虚拟会议将包括邀请演讲，然后围绕ERC支柱进行结构化对话。经济学和其他领域通过严格地结合心理学来解释与一致性、效用最大化、思维和行为的“理性”模型的系统性偏差，从而提高了它们的理论基础。该ERC通过社会对恢复性基础设施的关注，在工程领域寻求类似的进步。研究将促进对环境可持续性、基础设施系统和工程设计的理解。追求这一愿景将为扩展工程的边界以及将心理学更多地应用于工程相关的研究和实践做出急需的智力贡献。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.Our infrastructure influences everyone, and even those who never use it. Buildings and roads are where we spend most of our time and also account for the majority of energy use and associated emissions in the United States and globally. This project pursues transformative infrastructure improvements through a new approach merging engineering and psychology. The new approach promises solutions that do not rely solely on material resources, which often cost less than purely technological responses, and can be more rapidly translated from research to practice. Beyond better infrastructure, this project's merging of engineering and psychology promises societal impacts in three additional ways. First, through engineering workforce development, by not only better preparing engineers for current engineering jobs, but also by extending the types of jobs for which engineering students are prepared. Second, through diversity and culture of inclusion, by broadening the pool of people who see themselves as potential engineers and by appealing to a more diverse group of prospective engineers. And third, by building an innovation ecosystem through the embedded industry partnerships that are central to this project. This project is to plan for an ERC that envisions services (e.g., shelter, mobility, and water) provided via infrastructure that goes beyond reducing negative environmental impacts to actually creating positive ones. Such restorative infrastructure addresses engineering grand challenges and supports global development goals. Restorative infrastructure is elusive, however, in large part because it requires merged understanding of technological and social systems, and therefore of engineering and psychology. The potential ERC will pursue convergence research between these disciplines, focused on identifying obstacles to and opportunities for creating restorative infrastructure. The project core team brings together engineers and psychologists, academics and practitioners, already working together on convergence research for restorative infrastructure. This planning grant will help the core team mature these unique existing relationships and extend team formation to a larger stakeholder community. The team plans to facilitate engineering workforce development with embedded research residencies in which researchers study fundamental questions in natural contexts with program partners. The core team will identify and fill gaps in disciplinary and practical expertise through in-person planning charrettes held in conjunction with the ideas42 Behavioral Summit (October 2018, New York) and Engineering Sustainability Conference (April 2019, Pittsburgh). Building upon the in-person meetings, virtual bi-weekly meet-ups will include invited presentations followed by structured conversation around ERC pillars. Economics and other fields have advanced their theoretical foundations by rigorously incorporating psychology to account for systematic deviations from "rational" models of consistent, utility-maximizing, thinking and behavior. This ERC seeks analogous advances for engineering, through the social focus on restorative infrastructure. Research will advance understanding of environmental sustainability, infrastructure systems, and engineering design. Pursuing this vision will make much-needed intellectual contributions to both extend the boundaries of engineering as well as bring more applications of psychology into engineering-related research and practice.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.