Award Abstract # 1441263
RIPS Type 1: The Interdependence of Built, Social and Information Infrastructures for Community Resilience: A Participatory Process

NSF Org: EFMA
Emerging Frontiers & Multidisciplinary Activities
Recipient: THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
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: FY 2014 = $299,219.00
History of Investigator:
  • Abbie Liel (Principal Investigator)
    abbie.liel@colorado.edu
  • Leah Sprain (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Leysia Palen (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Shideh Dashti (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Amy Javernick-Will (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Bruce Goldstein (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of Colorado at Boulder
3100 MARINE ST
Boulder
CO  US  80309-0001
(303)492-6221
Sponsor Congressional District: 02
Primary Place of Performance: University of Colorado Boulder
3100 Marine St Rm 481 572 UCB
Boulder
CO  US  80309-0572
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
02
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): SPVKK1RC2MZ3
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): CIS-Civil Infrastructure Syst
Primary Program Source: 01001415DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 029E, 036E, 039E, 1631, 8250
Program Element Code(s): 1631
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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Arneson, E., D. Deniz, A. Javernick-Will, A. Liel, and S. Dashti "Information Deficits and Post-Disaster Recovery" ASCE 2016 Construction Research Congress. San Juan, Puerto Rico. , 2016
Robert Soden, Leysia Palen, Claire Chase, Derya Deniz, Erin Arneson, Leah Sprain, B Goldstein, Abbie Liel, Amy Javernick-Will, Shideh Dashti "The Polyvocality of Resilience: Discovering a Research Agenda through Interdisciplinary Investigation & Community Engagement (Runner up for student paper award)" 12th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM 2015 , 2015
Sprain, L., Liel, A., Javernick-Will, A., Palen, L., Dashti, S., and Goldstein, B "Reimagining critical infrastructure for community resilience: Interdependent build, information, and social dimensions of critical infrastructure." Conference on Earth System Governance. Canberra, Australia , 2015
Deniz, Derya, Erin Arneson, Abbie Liel, Shideh Dashti, Amy Javernick-Will. "Flood Vulnerability Models for Residential Buildings Based on the 2013 Colorado Floods" Natural Hazards. , 2017 10.1007/s11069-016-2615-3
Soden, R. and Palen, L. "Infrastructure in the Wild: What Mapping in Post-Earthquake Nepal Reveals about Infrastructural Emergence." In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM. , 2016 , p.2786

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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