EAGER: SAI: Developing Effective and Culturally Appropriate Alaskan Housing: Performance metrics for future builds based on an interdisciplinary ethnography of past projects

加强美国基础设施（SAI）是美国国家科学基金会的一个项目，旨在促进以人为本的基础研究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的生活质量改善提供了坚实的基础。强大、可靠和有效的基础设施刺激私营部门的创新，发展经济，创造就业机会，使公共部门提供的服务更有效率，加强社区，促进机会平等，保护自然环境，加强国家安全，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侧重于人类推理和决策、治理以及社会和文化过程的知识如何使有效基础设施的建设和维护成为可能，从而改善生活和社会，并以技术和工程的进步为基础。SAI EAGER奖支持一个由人类学家、教育家、建筑商和工程师组成的跨学科团队，调查阿拉斯加偏远社区过去住房项目的成功与失败。他们正在与当地的研究助理合作，将建筑诊断、当地见解、社会经济数据和具有文化特色的住房设计结合起来。该团队正致力于创建一个可在开源平台上使用的设计和发现存储库。这项研究产生的数据将为阿拉斯加未来的基础设施投资提供信息和加强，研究方法将为数十个社区的类似研究调查奠定基础。该项目通过合作研究活动、创客空间活动和社区参与，扩大了工程领域的参与。阿拉斯加州农村地区的住房安全危机，因气候变化而加剧，并因最近的大流行而更加突出，给资源匮乏的社区带来了巨大负担。虽然解决这些问题的大规模投资可能即将到来，但显然需要对阿拉斯加农村住房进行前沿研究和丰富的社会数据，以指导未来的项目，避免过去的错误。这个研究项目通过阿拉斯加内外的专家和社区成员的实验合作解决了这一知识缺陷，他们正在开发综合技术和民族志知识，了解最近寒冷气候示范住宅对阿拉斯加人生活经历的基础设施影响。研究小组正在两个不同的生态区域（内陆的布鲁克斯山脉和沿海的育空-库斯库温三角洲）调查寒冷气候示范住宅的成功与失败。他们将人种学数据与建筑诊断相结合，使用人为因素和工程方法来评估建筑实践的表现。数据将在在线参与式设计研讨会上共享和共同分析，专家和社区利益相关者将参与阿拉斯加农村住房安全问题。社区方法将揭示住房负担、负担和费用的经验知识，并将收集阿拉斯加农村住房安全相关的设计后数据。数据还被用于为未来的建筑项目制定符合社区或机构需求的绩效指标和指导。总之，这些材料为最终的设计存储库提供了内容。最后，在这个项目中开发的综合方法为检查其他设计后场地的长期研究奠定了基础。该项目关注建筑环境对社区的影响，案例研究方法的可推广性不仅可以在阿拉斯加的其他地区推广，还可以在美国的其他适当地区推广。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。

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.This SAI EAGER award supports an interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, educators, builders, and engineers investigating the successes and failures of past housing projects in remote Alaskan communities. They are working with local research assistants to combine building diagnostics, local insights, socio-economic data, and culturally specific housing design. The team is working towards the creation of a repository of designs and findings that is available on an open-source platform. The data produced from this study will inform and strengthen future Alaskan infrastructure investments, and the research methods will lay the groundwork for similar research investigations in dozens of communities. The project broadens participation in engineering through collaborative research activities, makerspace activities, and community engagement.The housing security crisis in rural Alaska, exacerbated by climate change and highlighted by the recent pandemic, places immense burdens on resource-strapped communities. While large-scale investments to address these problems may be on the horizon, there is a clear need for cutting-edge research and socially rich data on rural Alaskan housing to guide future projects and avoid mistakes of the past. This research project tackles this knowledge deficit with an experimental collaboration of experts and community members from inside and outside Alaska who are developing integrated techniques and ethnographically informed understandings of the infrastructural impacts that recent cold-climate demonstration homes have on the lived experiences of Alaskans. The research team is investigating the successes and failures of cold-climate demonstration homes in two distinct eco-regions (inland Brooks Range and coastal Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta). They are integrating ethnographic data with building diagnostics using human factors and engineering methods to assess the performance of construction practices. Data will be shared and co-analyzed during online participatory design workshops involving experts and community stakeholders who are invested in rural Alaska housing security issues. The community approach will reveal experiential knowledge of housing affordances, burdens, and expenses, and will result in a collection of post-design data related to housing security in rural Alaska. Data is also being used to develop performance metrics and guidance for future building projects in formats that meet the needs of communities or agencies. Taken together, these materials are providing content for an eventual design repository. Finally, the integrative methodology developed in this project lays the foundation for longer term research examining additional post-design sites. This project’s focus on the effects of the built environment on communities and the generalizability of the methods from the case studies will be replicable not just in other regions of Alaska, but in other appropriate regions of the U.S.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.