Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Agricultural and Rural Connectivity (ARC)

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。没有高速互联网的2400万美国人中有80%生活在农村地区。缺乏宽带接入严重限制了农村居民的生活质量，在气候变化和人口不断增长的情况下，这是潜在的全球农业资源冲突的主要来源。城乡数字鸿沟的产生通常归因于低人口密度导致的经济激励不足。随着农村社区人口密度的下降，农业领域的联网设备密度稳步增加。因此，我们可能会目睹农场和农村城镇之间新的数字鸿沟的演变，而过时的政策阻碍了新型网络架构的实现，这加剧了这一差距。因此，现有的农业实践受到以前的连接技术的限制（因此被定义），这些技术不是针对农业领域的独特特征而设计的。农业和农村互联互通工程研究中心（ARC）将联合工程师、计算机科学家、农学家和动物科学家、社会科学家、教育/外联专家、工业、市政、政府机构和社区利益相关者，弥合城乡数字鸿沟。ARC将设计新颖的农村连接架构和解决方案，提高农村社区的数字素养，以扩展和利用连接解决方案，扩大服务不足和代表性不足的农村社区对工程研究和开发的参与，并利用蓬勃发展的硅草原生态系统将研究解决方案与商业企业联系起来。ARC将推进基础研究，提供劳动力培训，并培育应对农村社区连通性挑战所需的创新生态系统。其多元化的团队将确定农村连接（社会）的经济驱动因素和政策约束，相关的农村用例（科学界）以及相应的连接需求（工程界）-所有这些都是为了解决关键的现实问题。ARC认识到，没有一种现有的无线技术可以解决农村宽带连接问题。因此，该规划拨款汇集了农业物联网、车联网、无人机通信、农业机器人和精准牲畜管理方面的各种专业知识，重点关注五个主要融合研究方向：1)农场作为锚机构架构，结合无线技术、经济学、电信法和农业科学方面的专业知识，实现农村农业、卫生、教育和基础设施方面的突破。2)敏捷技术转移，用于与研发并行的新通信解决方案的持续集成。3)农业机器人取代大马力拖拉机，提高生产率，同时减少对环境的负面影响。4)广泛高速覆盖的移动连接架构。5)精确的动物管理，帮助动物管理与动物营销的时机，提高对动物健康和福祉问题的检测。通过弥合数字鸿沟，这些融合的研究方向将通过连接农村城镇、学校、医院、农田、牧场、道路和桥梁，刺激农村繁荣，改善粮食安全。ARC团队将利用ERC计划拨款完成一系列活动，旨在加强与本地服务机构和农村社区学院（DCI）的合作关系，制定全面的工程劳动力发展计划（EWD），维护和扩大现有利益相关者社区，实现多元化和包容性愿景（DCI/IE/EWD），明确融合研究方向（CR），并加强ARC领导层和核心团队（CR/DCI/EWD/IE）。为此，一系列的务虚会将来自公共、私人和学术部门的不同利益相关者社区以及工程学生团体聚集在一起，所有这些人都将融入中心的活动。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.Eighty percent of the 24 million Americans without high-speed Internet live in rural areas. This lack of broadband access severely limits the quality of life for rural residents and is a major source for potential global conflict over agricultural resources in the face of climate change and a growing population. The urban-rural digital divide is generally attributed to a lack of economic incentives resulting from low population density. As the population density in rural communities decreases, the density of connected devices in agricultural fields steadily increases. As a result, we are likely witnessing the evolution of a new digital gap between farm fields and rural towns exacerbated by outdated policy that prevents the realization of novel network architectures. As such, existing agricultural practices are limited (and therefore defined) by previous connectivity technologies, which were not designed for the unique characteristics of agricultural fields. The Engineering Research Center for Agricultural and Rural Connectivity (ARC) will unite engineers, computer scientists, agronomists and animal scientists, social scientists, education/outreach specialists, industry, municipalities, government agencies, and community stakeholders to bridge the urban/rural digital divide. ARC will engineer novel rural connectivity architectures and solutions, enhance rural communities' digital literacy to expand and utilize connectivity solutions, broaden participation of underserved and underrepresented rural communities in engineering research and development, and leverage a blossoming Silicon Prairie ecosystem to connect research solutions with commercial enterprises. ARC will advance fundamental research, provide workforce training, and foster the innovation ecosystem required to answer the connectivity challenges of rural communities. Its diverse team will identify economic drivers and policy constraints for rural connectivity (society), associated rural use cases (scientific community), and corresponding connectivity requirements (engineering community) – all toward solving critical real-world problems. ARC recognizes that no single existing wireless technology can solve rural broadband connectivity issues. Therefore, this planning grant brings together diverse expertise in agricultural Internet of Things, vehicular networking, UAV communications, agricultural robotics, and precision livestock management to focus on five primary convergent research directions:1) Farm as an Anchor Institution architectures that combine expertise in wireless technologies, economics, telecom law, and agricultural sciences to enable breakthroughs in rural agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure. 2) Agile technology transfer for continuous integration of new communication solutions in parallel with research and development. 3) Agricultural robotics to replace high-horse-power tractors and boost productivity while reducing negative impacts on the environment. 4) Mobile connectivity architectures for extensive high-speed coverage. 5) Precision animal management to aid animal caretaking with the timing of animal marketing and improve detection of animal health and well-being concerns. By bridging the digital divide, these convergent research directions will stimulate rural prosperity and improve food security by connecting rural towns, schools, hospitals, farm fields, ranches, roads, and bridges. The ARC team will use the ERC planning grant to complete a series of activities designed to enhance partnerships with native-serving institutions and rural community colleges (DCI), develop a comprehensive engineering workforce development program (EWD), maintain and expand the existing stakeholder community toward a diverse and inclusive vision (DCI/IE/EWD), crystallize convergent research directions (CR), and enhance the ARC leadership and core team (CR/DCI/EWD/IE). To this end, a series of retreats will bring together a diverse stakeholder community from public, private, and academic sectors, along with an engineering student body, all of whom will be integrated into the center's activities.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.