EAGER: SAI: Understanding and Bridging the Smart Technology Infrastructure Divide in Rural America

加强美国基础设施（SAI）是NSF的一项计划，旨在促进以人为本的基础和潜在的变革性研究，以加强美国的基础设施。有效的基础设施为社会经济活力和广泛改善生活质量奠定了坚实的基础。强大、可靠和有效的基础设施刺激私营部门创新，促进经济增长，创造就业机会，提高公共部门服务提供的效率，加强社区建设，促进机会平等，保护自然环境，增强国家安全，并推动美国的领导地位。为了实现这些目标，需要来自科学和工程学科的专业知识。SAI专注于人类推理和决策，治理，社会和文化过程的知识如何使建设和维护有效的基础设施，改善生活和社会，并建立在技术和工程的进步。随着所谓的“智能”技术不断成熟，这一鸿沟可能会进一步扩大。发展智慧农村社区需要先进的网络化技术基础设施、数字应用和社会配套基础设施。为了使农村社区变得智能，社会基础设施应该成为技术基础设施核心功能的组成部分。该项目促进了我们对美国农村技术和社会基础设施相互作用的理解和加强。该项目有助于协同和优先考虑联邦，州和企业投资，并制定政策，以推进智能农村发展。该项目使医疗服务提供者、教育工作者、技术开发者和政策制定者能够在COVID-19大流行期间和之后更好地为农村居民提供医疗和教育服务。信息和通信技术以及社会基础设施方面的现有差距，如果不加以干预，理论上会演变成一种新的社会不平等形式-一种巧妙的鸿沟。然而，目前尚不清楚农村地区的技术和社会基础设施存在哪些差距，哪些社会基础设施对支持智能农村发展至关重要，以及技术和社会基础设施如何共同发展和共同平衡以提高农村的“智能”。该项目的目标是充分理解和描述社会技术本体、背景和智能技术的低可用性和获取的影响，并制定战略，加强农村社区的信息和通信技术及社会基础设施。该项目的重点是远程保健和远程教育的基础设施和社会支持，在伊利诺斯州南部两个人口高度多样化和社会不平等的农村城镇使用试验台。该项目为了解远程保健和在线教育的提供和获取情况奠定了社会技术理论基础，并通过访谈和邮件调查，说明信息和通信技术与社会基础设施之间的差距和相互作用。它还寻求确定和管理创新解决方案的技术采用利基，以增加农村获得远程保健和在线教育的机会。这些方法基于跨学科研究努力和社区参与，旨在加强农村社区的智能发展。该奖项的成果不仅将促进创新战略，以弥合智能鸿沟，而且还将在理论上为下一代农村智能和互联社区的设计提供信息。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。

Strengthening American Infrastructure (SAI) is an NSF Program seeking to stimulate human-centered fundamental and potentially transformative research that strengthens America’s infrastructure. Effective infrastructure provides a strong foundation for socioeconomic vitality and broad quality of life improvement. Strong, reliable, and effective infrastructure spurs private-sector innovation, grows the economy, creates jobs, makes public-sector service provision more efficient, strengthens communities, promotes equal opportunity, protects the natural environment, enhances national security, and fuels American leadership. To achieve these goals requires expertise from across the science and engineering disciplines. SAI focuses on how knowledge of human reasoning and decision making, governance, and social and cultural processes enables the building and maintenance of effective infrastructure that improves lives and society and builds on advances in technology and engineering.The development of computer and information technology to support public and private services in many cities is nearly absent in rural communities. This divide may further widen as so-called “smart” technologies continue to mature. Developing smart rural communities requires advanced and networked technological infrastructure, digital applications, and social supporting infrastructure. For rural communities to be smart, social infrastructure should be integral to the core functioning of technological infrastructure. This project advances our understanding, and strengthening, of the interplay of technological and social infrastructures in rural America. This project helps synergize and prioritize federal, state, and entrepreneurial investment, and develop policies to advance smart rural development. The project allows healthcare providers, educators, technology developers, and policy makers to better serve rural citizens for healthcare and education during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing gaps in information and communication technologies and social infrastructures, without intervention, theoretically evolve into a new form of social inequality — a smart divide. However, it is unclear what gaps exist in technological and social infrastructures in rural areas, what social infrastructure may be critical to support smart rural development, and how technological and social infrastructures can co-develop and co-balance to increase rural “smartness”. The goal of this project is to fully understand and characterize social-technical ontology, contexts, and implications of low availability and access to smart technologies and to develop strategies for strengthening information and communication technologies and social infrastructures in rural communities. The focus of this project is on the infrastructural and social support of telehealth and remote education using testbeds in two rural towns in southern Illinois with highly diverse populations and social inequalities. The project develops a theoretical social-technical foundation to understand the availability of and accessibility to telehealth and online education, and characterizes the gaps and interplay of information and communications technology and social infrastructures using interviews and mail surveys. It also seeks to identify and manage technological adoption niches for innovative solutions to increase rural accessibility to telehealth and online education. The approaches, based on interdisciplinary research efforts and community engagement, are meant to enhance rural communities’ smart development. The outcomes are expected to not only facilitate innovative strategies to bridge the smart divide but also theoretically inform the next-generation design of rural smart and connected communities.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.