CAREER: CAS-Climate: Addressing Climate Change Impacts on Urban Water Affordability

该项目将解决气候变化对家庭用水负担能力的影响。气候变化正在增加许多地区的水文变异性和水资源压力，导致水资源规划者投资于昂贵的新供水基础设施。然而，许多低收入家庭目前仍难以支付水费。因此，对供水基础设施的昂贵投资可能会违反直觉地损害水安全，使更多的人负担不起水。美国国家科学基金会的这项资助解决了这个问题，首先，开发了一种新的方法来评估气候变化对水负担能力的影响，该方法考虑了环境、社会和基础设施因素，这些因素共同决定了水的负担能力。其次，它设计基础设施和政策解决方案，使供水系统在不断变化的气候中既可靠，又能为低收入人口负担得起。通过与外部利益相关者的合作，本研究将为当地水资源规划者和政策制定者提供知识，以提高水资源可负担性项目的有效性。该项目将开发一种方法，全面评估气候变化对家庭用水负担能力和设计解决方案的影响。为了实现这一目标，该项目将推进在系统模型中实现分配公平的理论和多尺度城市水系统建模的方法。首先，该项目将通过一个新颖的系统建模框架，整合州、城市和家庭尺度上的环境、人类和基础设施动态，促进对家庭用水负担能力驱动因素的理解。其次，研究小组将预测气候变化对水供应和需求的影响，使用一种针对与水系统结果相关的尺度进行预测的方法。第三，该项目将利用强化学习方面的最新进展来设计基础设施和政策解决方案，以实现水的可负担性和可靠性目标。为了确保研究结果转化为实践，研究小组将与两个城市合作，并建立一个外部咨询委员会。此外，该项目还将促进对学生、水资源管理者和当地社区的水资源公平和可负担性教育。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。

This project will address the impact of climate change on household water affordability. Climate change is increasing hydrological variability and water stress in many regions, leading water planners to invest in expensive new water supply infrastructure. However, many low-income households currently struggle to pay their water bills. Therefore, costly investments in water supply infrastructure may counterintuitively harm water security by making water unaffordable for a larger number of people. This NSF grant addresses this problem by, first, developing a new approach to assess the impact of climate change on water affordability that considers the environmental, social, and infrastructure factors that combine to determine water affordability. Second, it designs infrastructure and policy solutions to enable water supply systems to be both reliable in a changing climate and affordable for low-income populations. Through partnership with external stakeholders, this research will develop knowledge that local water planners and policymakers can use to improve the effectiveness of water affordability programs. This project will develop an approach to comprehensively assess the impact of climate change on household water affordability and design solutions. To achieve this, the project will advance theory for operationalizing distributional equity in systems models and methods for multi-scale urban water systems modeling. First, the project will advance understanding of the drivers of household water affordability through a novel systems-modeling framework that integrates environmental, human, and infrastructure dynamics across state, city, and household scales. Second, the research team will project climate change impacts on water supply and demand, using an approach that targets projections to the scales relevant for water system outcomes. Third, the project will leverage recent advances in reinforcement learning to design infrastructure and policy solutions to meet water affordability and reliability targets. To ensure the findings translate to practice, the research team will partner with two cities and develop an external advisory board. Additionally, the project will advance education on water equity and affordability for students, water managers, and local 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.