NSF Org: |
EFMA Emerging Frontiers & Multidisciplinary Activities |
Recipient: |
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Initial Amendment Date: | August 8, 2014 |
Latest Amendment Date: | December 7, 2015 |
Award Number: | 1441263 |
Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
Program Manager: |
David Mendonca
mendonca@nsf.gov (703)292-0000 EFMA Emerging Frontiers & Multidisciplinary Activities ENG Directorate For Engineering |
Start Date: | October 1, 2014 |
End Date: | September 30, 2016 (Estimated) |
Total Intended Award Amount: | $299,219.00 |
Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $299,219.00 |
Funds Obligated to Date: |
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History of Investigator: |
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Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
3100 MARINE ST Boulder CO US 80309-0001 (303)492-6221 |
Sponsor Congressional District: |
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Primary Place of Performance: |
3100 Marine St Rm 481 572 UCB Boulder CO US 80309-0572 |
Primary Place of Performance Congressional District: |
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Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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Parent UEI: |
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NSF Program(s): | CIS-Civil Infrastructure Syst |
Primary Program Source: |
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Program Reference Code(s): |
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Program Element Code(s): |
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Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
This project supports foundational research that explores and creates collaborative processes to foster community resilience. Current approaches that characterize resilience are engineering-based and predict possible infrastructure damage in the face of acute and/or chronic stressors. When resilience is more broadly reframed as the interdependence between the built, social, and information infrastructures, engineering and statistical models of infrastructure damage benefit from an adaptive and participatory approach that is effective, inclusive, and fair. It is hypothesized that participatory processes of model-building lead to community ownership, social learning, and capacity building, all of which contribute to resilience. Within the one-year time frame of this study, a framework is developed using the case study of 2013 flooding events in Boulder, Colorado. The Boulder case is used to explore and test the modeling and participatory processes, to generate a new understanding that can be transferred to other communities. The project provides a platform for team-building and formalized collaboration of cross-disciplinary expertise, while training a cohort of scholars, students and practitioners, who can bridge across disciplines and between research and practice to create usable science and models to foster resilience.
This research develops the conceptual framework and methodological approaches to marry physical and participatory processes for designing, modeling, and evaluating resilient communities. The study explores and test innovative, inclusive, and adaptive processes through which community stakeholders engage in and contribute to model development. At the same time, advanced predictive engineering-based models of interdependent built infrastructures are developed and piloted by the team. In-situ and participatory empirical research and design, combined with new forms of digital participation, generate a new understanding of inclusive development and delivery of predictive models. The novel integration of physically-grounded model development with participatory action research that engages stakeholders helps the development of predictive models of interdependent infrastructures in a larger, more realistic, and inclusive context.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This RIPS Type 1 project, led by an interdisciplinary team of scholars in civil engineering, computer and information sciences, and communication, framed community resilience as an interdependence between built, social, and information infrastructures. This project involved foundational research that explored and created collaborative processes to foster community resilience. Current approaches that characterize resilience are often solely engineering-based, predicting possible infrastructure damage in the face of acute and/or chronic stressors. When resilience is more broadly reframed as the interdependence between the built infrastructure, social infrastructure (the web of social structures and communications by people who occupy the built environment), and information infrastructure (the infrastructure through which individuals, groups, organizations and institutions learn, sensemake, and interact with information they produce, seek and transform), the engineering and statistical models of infrastructure damage benefit from an adaptive and participatory approach that is effective, inclusive, and fair. In this study, a framework was developed using the case study of 2013 flooding events in Boulder, Colorado. The Boulder case was used to explore and test modeling and participatory processes, to generate a new understanding that can be transferred to other communities. The project documented and analyzed community resiliency efforts, including information networks and the identification of information deficits and local government processes; created and tested engineering models; and trialed participatory games to better understand and improve resilient community infrastructures.
Specific outcomes from the research supported by this project include the: 1) examination of how stakeholders involved in local resiliency efforts frame resilience through polyvocality; 2) development of empirical and analytical models of flood damage for residential homes in the U.S. based on the Boulder experience; 3) identification and categorization of information deficits that hindered recovery from the floods in Boulder; 4) development and assessment of a game to understand the decision space for homeowners managing flood risk, exploring how players used information from engineering models to shift their decisions; 5) ethnographic shadowing of city officials in the Resilient Boulder working group that revealed challenges in enacting resilience-thinking processes within the institutional expectations of local government and in processing contributions through public engagement; 6) examination of flood hazard mapping processes in Colorado; and 7) investigation of the increasing demand for map-based information visualization information during and after crises.
Crucially, the project also provided a platform for team-building and formalized collaboration of cross-disciplinary expertise, while training a cohort of scholars, students and practitioners, who can bridge across disciplines and between research and practice to create usable science and models to foster resilience.
Last Modified: 12/30/2016
Modified by: Abbie B Liel
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