SAI-P: Designing Just Futures for Public Engagement in Petrochemical Pipeline Infrastructure

加强美国基础设施(SAI)是一项NSF计划，旨在刺激以人类为中心的基础性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创新，增长经济，创造就业机会，提高公共部门服务提供效率，加强社区力量，促进机会均等，保护自然环境，增强国家安全，推动美国的领导地位。要实现这些目标，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的基础设施的建设和维护改善生活和社会，并建立在技术和工程进步的基础上。石油化工管道是关于公众参与大型能源基础设施规划、建设和运营的重要性的辩论的中心。对于不同的利益攸关方来说，有效的参与可以产生更安全、更具弹性的项目，同时将负面影响降至最低。然而，参与也可能受到信息差距和其他程序不平等的阻碍。这个规划项目调查了公共利益团体如何使用地图、移动应用程序、环境监测和数据透明资源来参与管道基础设施。一系列研讨会探讨了这些团体如何设想他们的项目，从而导致更有力的参与形式。对管道运营商和监管机构的采访考察了该行业为管道运营商如何与公众打交道采用新标准的计划。调查结果为更有效地利用技术资源积极参与能源基础设施建设提供了指导。调查结果还有助于行业和监管进程采用新的标准，以最大限度地促进公平参与。这个SAI规划项目将研究团队定位为开发更大规模的未来研究项目。来自人机交互领域的思考性设计方法被用来推动科学、技术和社会领域关于公共使用“公民技术科学”的研究。得到支持的规划活动侧重于与管道有关的利益攸关方如何以不同的方式设想新标准对扩大公众参与的有用性。该项目还考虑了公民技术科学如何通过协作平台和工具包利用这些新机会。社会-生态-技术系统可持续性研究的一个基于正义的视角旨在产生一个模型，用于分析目前在与管道的公共接触中使用民间技术科学的系统，以及这些系统可能如何因新的行业标准而改变。这些知识的汇聚产生了新的知识，确定了实现公平和可持续基础设施的必要条件，同时为项目参与者设计的公民技术科学项目的未来实施奠定了基础。该奖项得到了社会、行为和经济科学理事会(SBE)的支持。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力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.Petrochemical pipelines are at the center of debates about the importance of public participation in the planning, construction, and operation of large-scale energy infrastructure. For diverse stakeholders, effective participation can result in safer and more resilient projects, while minimizing negative impacts. However, participation can also be hindered by informational gaps and other procedural inequities. This planning project investigates how public interest groups use mapping, mobile apps, environmental monitoring, and data transparency resources to engage with pipeline infrastructure. A series of workshops explore how these groups imagine their projects leading to more robust forms of participation. Interviews with pipeline operators and regulators examine the industry’s plans to adopt new standards for how pipeline operators engage with the public. Findings provide guidance for more effective public use of technological resources for proactive engagements with energy infrastructure. Findings also inform industry and regulatory processes in the adoption of new standards for maximizing equitable participation. This SAI planning project positions the research team to develop larger-scale future research projects.Speculative design methods from the field of Human-Computer Interactions are used to advance research in the field of Science, Technology, and Society on public uses of “civic technoscience”. The supported planning activities focus on the ways in which pipeline-related stakeholders differently imagine the usefulness of new standards for expanding public participation. The project also considers how civic technoscience can capitalize on these new opportunities through collaborative platforms and toolkits. A justice-based lens to sustainability studies of socio-ecological-technical systems aims to produce a model for analyzing the systems that shape the present use of civic technoscience in public engagements with pipelines, and how these may change as a result of new industry standards. These intellectual convergences produce new knowledge identifying the conditions necessary for achieving equitable and sustainable infrastructure while laying the groundwork for future implementations of civic technoscience projects designed by project participants.This award is supported by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Sciences.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.