EAGER: SAI: Understanding Social and Cultural Processes to Improve Transportation Infrastructure Planning

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。在美国，洪水发生的频率和强度都在增加。洪水严重影响道路和交通基础设施的结构完整性。交通规划者正开始实施缓解战略，旨在主动加强基础设施，以减少或消除此类潜在危险的风险。一个挑战是，并不是所有的洪水风险都可以减轻。因此，交通规划者必须决定哪些社区应该得到最高的优先权。传统的工程和规划方法主要基于技术标准，而不考虑交通基础设施受损的社会和心理影响。这项研究旨在更好地理解交通基础设施受损的行为、心理和社会后果。预期结果将支持制定指标，规划者可以利用这些指标优先投资交通基础设施，以减轻洪水风险和对个人和社区的不利社会行为影响。本研究分为三个模块。第一篇文章通过使用从智能手机和其他设备收集的大规模汇总匿名移动数据，研究了洪水事件在历史上是如何影响社区流动性的。第二个模块考察与旅行中断相关的社会和心理后果。这些影响包括情感后果、认知功能和时间匮乏。最后一个模块探讨了如何将洪水风险、流动性影响、社会脆弱性和心理后果整合到综合指标中，哪些因素与公众对这些指标的接受程度有关，以及交通规划者如何考虑使用这些指标。这项多方法研究包括对综合交通数据的分析、对洪水易发地区受访者的大规模调查、对综合指标的统计分析以及对交通规划者的定性访谈。该SAI项目展示了如何将社会行为科学和土木工程的研究相结合，从而更全面地了解社会、心理和建筑环境，以及如何改进交通基础设施风险管理决策。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. The frequency and magnitude of flooding is increasing in the United States. Flooding heavily impacts the structural integrity of roads and transportation infrastructure. Transportation planners are starting to implement mitigation strategies aimed at proactively enhancing infrastructure to reduce or eliminate risk from such potential hazards. One challenge is that not every flood risk can be mitigated. As a result, transportation planners must decide which communities should receive highest priority. Traditional engineering and planning approaches base these decisions mainly on technical criteria and do not incorporate social and psychological impacts of damaged transportation infrastructure. This research seeks to better understand the behavioral, psychological, and social consequences of damaged transportation infrastructure. Anticipated results will support the creation of metrics that planners can use to prioritize investing in transportation infrastructure in a way that mitigates both flood risks and adverse socio-behavioral impacts on individuals and communities.The research is organized in three modules. The first examines how flooding events have historically impacted community mobility by using large-scale aggregate, anonymized mobility data collected from smartphones and other devices. The second module examines the social and psychological consequences associated with disrupted travel. These impacts include emotional consequences, cognitive functioning, and time poverty. The final module explores how flood risk, mobility impacts, social vulnerability, and psychological consequences can be integrated into comprehensive metrics, what factors are associated with public acceptance of such metrics, and how transportation planners consider the use of such metrics. The multi-method research includes analyses of aggregated mobility data, large-scale survey of respondents in flood prone areas, statistical analysis of aggregating metrics, and qualitative interviews with transportation planners. This SAI project demonstrates how research in social-behavioral science and civil engineering can be integrated to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the social, psychological, and built environments, and how decisions about managing risks to transportation infrastructure can be improved.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.