March 15, 2005

April 21, 2005

CLEANER: Project Office to Coordinate Network Activities

CLEANER (Collaborative Large-scale Engineering Analysis Network for Environmental Research).

The goal of CLEANER is to fundamentally transform and radically advance the scientific and engineering knowledge base to address the challenges of large-scale human-dominated complex environmental systems.

CLEANER will:

• Be an integrated system of distributed, networked facilities and researchers to more readily identify knowledge gaps related to environmental quality issues;
• Enable the development of effective engineering approaches to complex, national-scale environmental problems;
• Consist of (a) interacting field sites networked through cyberinfrastructure; (b) groups of investigators studying landscapes stressed by human activities and/or highly urbanized regions; (c) specialized personnel, facilities, and technology that support the investigators, and (d) an analysis network with common modeling platforms and analysis protocols that will serve as the central organizational framework for collaborative investigations;
• Support collection of critical environmental data with advanced sensor array systems and in situ instrumentation;
• Facilitate data mining and aggregation and provide analytical tools for data visualization, exploratory data analysis, and predictive modeling of large-scale dynamic environmental management strategies;
• Enable more effective adaptive management approaches for human-dominated environmental systems based on enhanced observations, experimentation, modeling, engineering analysis, and design;
• Enable participation from a broad engineering and science community, including educators, students, practitioners, and public sector organizations and individuals, who will have access to CLEANER's equipment, data, models, and software; and
• Transform engineering education by engaging the academic community in large-scale and complex real-world problems.

Contaminants are widespread in the 21^st century environment, posing threats to human life, wellbeing, and environmental sustainability at all levels. Even remote areas, such as the Arctic, now are polluted with toxic materials such as mercury and chlorinated organic chemicals, even though the human activities that generate them often are many thousands of miles away. Contaminated water resources are a special concern, with major problems documented in large rivers (e.g., the Mississippi and Hudson), coastal waters (e.g., Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay), numerous ground-water aquifers, and many lakes of all sizes. For example, despite improvements in wastewater treatment, many surface-water systems are impaired by nutrient enrichment, and pathogenic microorganisms, still common in the nation’s waters, threaten recreation and drinking water supplies. Organic chemicals and heavy metals from municipal and industrial sources pose risks to human health and to aquatic organisms.

To address the large-scale environmental problems facing the United States in the 21st century, we need fundamental knowledge of (1) the sources of contaminants and how they are linked to different types and levels of human activities; (2) the persistence, transport processes and degradation mechanisms of these contaminants; and (3) the risks they pose to the environment and humans (Ref. NRC Report "Envisioning the Agenda for Water Resources Research in the Twenty-First Century", NAS Press, 2001). Because pollutants move between air, water, and land, we need to understand the interplay between these media and how efforts to control pollutants in one compartment affect environmental quality in other media. In addition, we need more effective ways to select among management strategies (e.g., promoting the use of alternative materials versus developing enhanced waste treatment options) to address complicated environmental problems. To enable the engineering research and education communities to address these issues, the Directorate for Engineering proposes CLEANER.

VISION: CLEANER has the strategic intent to create a system where theorists, experimentalists, and computational experts collaborate on significant environmental problems, thereby identifying and resolving knowledge gaps related to these problems. This collaboration will operate using an adaptive management framework, in which management strategies are improved over time based on the knowledge gained by studying how environmental systems respond to management actions. Modeling would be the central component for analysis, knowledge synthesis, and design of further experimentation. Modeling for adaptive management would include systems analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA) models that incorporate consideration of economics, uncertainty and risk in decision-making.

The Directorate for Engineering is conducting planning that, subject to the availability of funding from the Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account, may lead to construction of an integrated network focused on critical science questions related to solving large-scale environmental pollution problems. The network will have the following characteristics: (1) sets of physical, chemical, and biological sensors and instruments that will enhance collection of basic environmental data related to major pollution issues; (2) a distributed cyberinfrastructure that supports networks of researchers through real-time communications and software; (3) multi-scale modeling capabilities that interface consistently among spatial and temporal scales; (4) database systems and data-mining techniques to allow sharing of multimedia information pertaining to different environmental systems; (5) facilities to support experimental research on problems described by the observation network and defined by analysis/modeling activities; (6) support services to promote the effective shared-use and open access of these resources; and (7) capabilities to incorporate new construction or additions to existing facilities to enhance the network.

An integral component of this planning is the establishment of a Project Office to coordinate and assist with activities leading to the establishment of CLEANER. These activities first and foremost include (1) refining the key science questions (grand challenges for environmental engineering) that CLEANER will address and (2) developing a unified community vision for the facilities and infrastructure needed to address these issues. A conceptual design that describes the research, education, and outreach plans will be a natural consequence of these activities. An important task of the Project Office is to develop a community consortium that has the capability to plan, design, construct, and operate the CLEANER network.

"Nothing is more fundamental to life than water. Not only is water a basic need, but adequate safe water underpins the nation's health, economy, security, and ecology. The strategic challenge for the future is to ensure adequate quantity and quality of water to meet human and ecological needs in the face of growing competition among domestic, industrial-commercial, agricultural, and environmental uses." (Ref. NRC Report "Confronting the Nation's Water Problems: The Role of Research", NAS Press, 2004).

The NRC report highlights the need to focus on major knowledge gaps in water research with a systems approach. The report presents several common themes that should be used to evaluate water research areas, namely:

• The interdisciplinary nature of the research,
• The need for a broad systems context in phrasing research questions and pursuing answers,
• The incorporation of uncertainty concepts and measurements into all aspects of research, and
• How well the research addresses the role of adaptation in human and ecological response to changing water resources.

These themes are the basis for CLEANER (Collaborative Large-scale Engineering Analysis Network for Environmental Research). The concept of CLEANER has been developed over the past three years in a national symposium and a series of six workshops held in various locations around the United States. Proceedings of the workshops and symposium are found on the CLEANER web site: http://CLEANER.NACSE.org. The workshops have led to a set of three key science questions and four national needs that CLEANER should address, along with a longer list of 25 environmental research topics that the program could focus on. The workshops also have developed several models for the program structure and basic network design. NSF currently is funding 12 planning grants involving 22 academic and research institutions to conduct preliminary studies on cyberinfrastructure and field facilities needed to make CLEANER operational.

The NRC Report puts forth the question:

In the future, will there be adequate water to meet the needs of competing uses?

CLEANER, an engineering and science research and education thrust, centers on this very issue, especially on the safety and quality of water. The widespread occurrence of contaminants in the environment poses threats to human life, wellbeing, and environmental sustainability, even remote areas, such as polar regions, where contaminants are delivered primarily by long-range atmospheric transport from sources linked to human activities many thousands of miles away. However, even in such cases, routes of exposure to humans usually involve aquatic resources, either for drinking purposes or as a source for food. Contaminants in water resources are a major concern in the United States, with serious problems documented in rivers, coastal waters, and lakes of all sizes. Excessive levels of nutrients and sediments impair uses in many surface waters; pathogenic microorganisms still are widely distributed in the nation’s waters and they threaten recreation and drinking water supplies. Organic chemicals and heavy metals from municipal and industrial sources pose risks to human health and to aquatic organisms.

Technological issues, such as process and product redesign and manufacturing, as well as behavioral factors, such as economic and other social forces that affect consumption and adoption of new technologies and materials, are important factors in preventing or eliminating contaminants. Studies aimed at reducing adverse human/environmental impacts of resource use, as well as maximizing efficient use of materials throughout their life cycles, are elements of the CLEANER strategy.

As a nation, we seek long-term economic growth that creates jobs and other economic opportunities while improving and sustaining the environment for future generations. A new generation of manufacturing, processing, and construction technologies is needed that supports pollution avoidance/prevention (at the source), efficient resource use, and industrial ecology. Besides addressing issues of economic competitiveness, such technologies can contribute to solutions of large-scale environmental problems. Because industry is as an important component of human-dominated environmental systems, the imperative for fundamental research on industrial operations is obvious. Research that advances the development of manufacturing and processing technologies directed at avoiding or minimizing pollutant generation forms another element of the comprehensive CLEANER strategy.

A major focus of CLEANER will be on improving knowledge about contaminant fate and transport processes in human-dominated environmental systems. Multi-scale models, which are currently lacking, will advance our understanding of atmospheric, geospheric, and hydrospheric interactions in large-scale, human-dominated systems. These models will reduce the need to make assumptions about environmental processes, narrow the uncertainty in parameter values, and provide better information about time variability of model parameters and structure. They also will establish a foundation for identifying knowledge gaps and the discoveries and advances needed to fill these gaps, and they will be important in developing engineering options for resource management. A distributed network of coordinated facilities in natural and built environments is essential to facilitate these advancements. This network will provide dynamic databases for an engineering analysis network (EAN) that will facilitate experimental studies to solve problems described by the field network and defined by the multi-scale models. Integration and analysis of field and experimental data and modeling/collaborative tools in the EAN will be enabled by a cyberinfrastructure that will extend the capabilities of the database and provide standard visualization and analysis tools to the research community. The result will be the ability to "leapfrog" current capabilities.

To accomplish these goals within the MREFC guidelines (https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2003/nsf03049/nsf03049.pdf ), the Engineering Directorate invites proposals from interested groups to establish a CLEANER Project Office. This office will coordinate and assist with activities that NSF anticipates may lead to the establishment of CLEANER, including developing: (i) a unified community vision for the key scientific questions on which CLEANERwill focus; (ii) a community consortium (described below); (iii) a conceptual design, including research, education, outreach and cyberinfrastructure plans; (iv) a strategy for involving other relevant government agencies and private sector organizations in CLEANER; and (v) a preliminary plan describing how the project would be accomplished. Proposals will be accepted from U.S. universities and colleges and non-profit organizations.

The new observational and analysis capabilities made possible by this network will significantly enhance the engineering and science communities, providing the means for conducting fundamental research on natural and human-induced environmental change over broad geographic and temporal scales. As such, the CLEANER initiative directly addresses NSF's three strategic goals related to People, Ideas, and Tools:

People: CLEANER will provide the transformative infrastructure to integrate research and education in the engineering community, especially for environmental engineering.

CLEANER embraces society’s large-scale environmental problems that today involve expenditures of billions of dollars. The challenge of these issues, coupled with CLEANER’s resources, provides a basis for new collaborations across disciplines and new curricula in environmental management and modeling. CLEANER ’s facilities, data, and computational resources will be broadly accessible through tools and incentives to promote collaboration among CLEANER researchers and with other environmental observatories. Partnerships or collaborations will be encouraged among members of the CLEANER community and other educational communities.

Ideas: Multi-scale community models for adaptive dynamic management of large-scale human- dominated complex environmental systems are the vehicles for knowledge synthesis, not only by network members, but also by the broader research and education communities.

Simulation and modeling are as important to discovery and innovation as theory and experimentation. Models developed with CLEANER thus will provide new knowledge on the transport and transformation processes of contaminants in aquatic systems. CLEANER also will provide a mechanism for testing model parameters and the open-source models will furnish a basis for ongoing research on key uncertainties. Therewith, CLEANER will create an environment where engineers, bio-physical and social scientists, and computational experts collaborate to develop improved approaches to managing complex environmental systems that reflect their underlying dynamics. This community of scholars will be led by researchers known for working close to the problem, using theory and computation to develop a deep understanding of the interplay between air, water, and land, and how controlling pollutants in one compartment affects environmental quality in the other media.

As highlighted in a recent GAO Report, ‘WATERSHED MANAGEMENT: Better Coordination of Data Collection Efforts Needed to Support Key Decisions” (GAO-04-382) www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-382, enhanced coordination of data collection efforts by federal and state agencies could reduce duplication of efforts, improve data compatibility and quality, and allow for better use of data being generated to improve water quality and water resource management. Along with other environmental observatories under development, CLEANER will play a key role in facilitating the development of integrated standards, a major element of data collection. Data collected by CLEANER, as required to address the science questions, will be openly available to maximize participation from the engineering and scientific communities and provide on-going educational outreach to students and the public.

Because the environmental problems driving the need for CLEANER are broad in scope and encompass nearly every area of engineering and science, the proposed networked facility constructed as part of this initiative will promote multidisciplinary research on adaptive environmental management. This will provide the engineering/science research community with a new mode of addressing a grand challenge in engineering research, namely the ability to embrace the scale of environmental problems faced by society today.

Tools: The technology to conduct research and model complex environmental systems will be revolutionized by emerging developments in cyberinfrastructure and sensors. To focus this activity, CLEANER will identify needs for sensors and also catalyze their development and deployment.

CLEANER’s infrastructure, as a cyber-based network, will support both long-term and specialized (ad hoc) data collection using advanced instrumentation, and where possible and appropriate, in situ sensor arrays. Relevant cyberinfrastructure will include software for data mining and aggregation, tools for data analysis and visualization, and platforms for multi-scale dynamic modeling of the consequences of alternative environmental management strategies. To ensure maintenance of state-of-the-art capabilities, the CLEANER grid will incorporate an architecture that allows assimilation of new applications over the project life. CLEANER will provide shared-use resources available to the broad community at all sites, centered on specialized field and laboratory instrumentation, analytical and collaborative tools, and curated databases and model repositories.

The Directorate for Engineering now is soliciting proposals from interested groups to establish a CLEANER project office. This office will refine the science plan for CLEANER and develop an overall design for the network.

Organization and Functions of the Project Office:

Operation of the CLEANER Project Office will require a team whose aggregate credentials must demonstrate expertise and accomplishments in the following areas: engineering and science research (including the physical, biological, and social sciences relevant to environmental systems), project management and engineering, organizational development, committee management, community outreach, operation/management of major facilities for scientific research, and web site development/maintenance. The successful team also must provide expertise for technical report editing and web-based publications. The project office will be expected to successfully complete the following tasks, which are listed in approximate order of the timeline for accomplishing them:

1. Identify and facilitate committees for continued refinement of the CLEANER science plan and network design: The project office, in consultation with the engineering and science research communities and NSF, will establish an advisory structure that provides the engineering and the bio-physical and social science leadership required to define all facets of CLEANER, including the major science questions to be addressed by the program, nature of the distributed field components and centralized facilities needed to address those questions, and the nature of the integrated analysis network. The advisory structure will include committees to address technical issues related to implementing the network, including cyberinfrastructure needs, data management, standardization of system components, and sensors and sensor networks. A key committee will be established to develop an enabling organizational structure for the CLEANER project, i.e., a community consortium (see task 3). Proposals should describe how committees will be organized, led, and operated, and how they will interact to reach consensus and disseminate their discussions and findings.

2. Define the science plan for CLEANER: As noted above, previous workshops have developed lists of research topics that the CLEANER network could address and have merged these topics into three “grand challenge” questions related to four national needs (see CLEANER web site for details). Through its committee structure and in consultation with the broader research community, the project office will define the science plan for CLEANER. As an overarching vision, this will include: (i) refinement of the grand challenges, (ii) the national needs they address, and (iii) the specific research questions on which CLEANER will be expected to focus in its initial operational phase. The project office (and committees) also will describe how this overarching vision translates into facility needs and into an overall design for the network and associated infrastructure.

3. Organize the community into a Consortium: Based on discussions with the advisory structure, the project office will develop an enabling organizational structure appropriate for the engineering and scientific leadership, overall governance, construction, operation, and administration of the CLEANER network, namely a community consortium. The consortium could be a newly developed entity, but consideration also should be given to the economies that may be realized by basing it on an existing consortium, such as the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI). Plans for the consortium are to be developed in the first year of this award with the goal that the consortium will be operational early in the second half of 2006. It is anticipated that continued development and planning for CLEANER will be conducted under the aegis of the consortium in subsequent years.

Proposals submitted in response to this solicitation should describe possible organizational structures for CLEANER and also describe (i) how they will be analyzed in the initial stages of the project and (ii) how this analysis will be used to inform development of the community consortium. Proposals should discuss important decision points in determining which options will be selected.

The project office also will work with NSF to facilitate participation of the engineering and science communities in the later phases of design, construction, and eventual shared-use of CLEANER facilities. As planning for CLEANER progresses, an important role of the project office will be to help foster close interactions between existing and planned observing systems, including other appropriate NSF research initiatives, such as Hydrologic Observatories, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), Earthscope, and Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). Such interactions may include shared use of facilities, co-location of field sites, development of common databases, and standardized protocols for commonly measured variables. Because of the common needs for water cycle measurements in CLEANER and the Hydrologic Observatories, it is expected that especially close relationships will be developed between these two programs. In addition, the project office will work with NSF to develop a strategy for involving other relevant government agencies and private sector organizations as active partners in CLEANER.

4. Develop a strategy for incorporating socio-economic considerations into the CLEANER planning process and research agenda: Economic, cultural, and political considerations are critically important in shaping how resources like clean water are used and in creating forces that promote or impede efforts to cope with natural resource degradation. Consequently, understanding how these forces operate is essential for successful implementation of the technical findings of CLEANER. A strategy for understanding the human dimensions of resource use and degradation, as well as the human dynamics involved in developing implementable solutions to environmental problems, should include provisions to collect and disseminate the types of data that will allow investigation of these issues. Educational uses of such data and needs for software development to facilitate its use in such settings also need to be addressed in this task.

5. Develop a conceptual design for CLEANER: The project office will develop a conceptual design for CLEANER based on input from the advisory structure and broader community. This design will describe the major research challenges that CLEANER will address (the “science plan”) and the enabling technologies to address these needs. The conceptual design must define CLEANER scientifically and technically, its relationships to the engineering and science communities, and its framework for educational outreach. The design will incorporate overviews of the cyberinfrastructure and sensor network plans described in tasks 6-7.

6. Develop a CLEANER Cyberinfrastructure Plan: CLEANER will rely heavily on the use of distributed cyberinfrastructure for data acquisition, analysis, dissemination and archiving, and for collaborative research by researchers distributed across the United States. The project office will formulate a strategy to enable a large-scale cyberinfrastructure, incorporating (i) the development of sensor and sensor network operations, (ii) data and model standards and protocols, and repositories, (iii) data sharing technologies, and (iv) tools and services to ingest, retrieve, archive and analyze data, metadata and models in a secure collaborative environment. It is expected that long-term data from the network will be openly distributed in near real-time. The cyberinfrastructure strategy will include the need to implement the most appropriate current approaches, while preserving flexibility to accommodate future enhancements.

Development of this strategy will need to occur in close cooperation with related cyberinfrastructure activities for environmental observatories at NSF and similar efforts at other agencies, such as the U.S. EPA, NOAA, USDA, NASA, DOD, DOE, USGS, Army Corps of Engineers, and/or other relevant federal and state agencies. The project office also will collaborate with these entities in developing policies for community access to CLEANER data. From the perspective of users, the environmental observatories should provide seamless access to multiple data streams for research and education.

7. Develop a CLEANER Sensor and Sensor Network Plan: There is a critical need for new and enhanced sensors for environmental observational networks, especially those that measure biological and chemical variables (concentrations as well as fluxes) in human-dominated systems. With input from the advisory structure, the project office will define the framework for sensor and sensor network development that would provide data on variables of highest priority (e.g., nutrients, micro-contaminants, industrial chemicals).

Ideal sensors will characterize processes in a variety of natural, urban, and industrial environments and operate unattended for collection of long-term datasets of high priority variables. Attaining these ideals for various sensors relevant to environmental research activities needs to be viewed as a process that will continue throughout the lifetime of the CLEANER program, and the program should be involved in these efforts. Based on the science plan and resulting data needs, the project office will evaluate which variables need to be measured continuously (or periodically) by unattended networks and which types of variables need to be measured by campaigns using in situ instrumentation or more conventional sampling/laboratory analysis programs. The project office will need to monitor progress in this rapidly developing field on a continuing basis to evaluate key gaps in technology that will need to be addressed to enable full-scale deployment of the sensor networks and in situ instrumentation required by CLEANER. The strategy will provide clear guidance to the sensor development community regarding these needs and describe the areas of highest priority. The guidance will address bio-fouling, measurement ranges needed from sensors, cost requirements, and other related deployment issues.

8. Operate an interactive web site for communicating with the engineering and science research and education communities and others regarding CLEANER activities/planning: Within twelve months after the award, the Project Office will assume operation of the existing CLEANER web site (http://cleaner.nacse.org). The site will be used to provide information on project activities and will be the source for meeting minutes, workshop announcements, and reports. The expectation is that in the operational phase of CLEANER the site will become the definitive source for network results, activities, major findings and discoveries of researchers, private industries, and local, state and federal agencies, and a resource for CLEANER educational activities, which are broadly defined to include formal instruction at all levels and informal education for the community

9. Develop a preliminary program plan for CLEANER, including organizational structure, governance, costs, construction, commissioning, and operating plans: The preliminary plan that is the focus of this task represents the summation of results from the preceding tasks. The plan will be based on the conceptual design (see task 5) and recommendations from the community-based advisory structure established by the project office. The program plan will describe the science plan and how that leads to the proposed facilities, network design, and linking cyberinfrastructure. The plan also will describe the proposed organizational structure to guide the development, construction and operation of the CLEANER network and provide preliminary system-level construction and operation cost and schedule estimates. The system-level cost estimates and schedule estimates should be based on scaling from other projects.

Although proposals for the CLEANER Project Office must address the tasks outlined above, proposers are encouraged to identify additional tasks that they feel are important to complete prior to the CLEANER construction phase.

TIMELINE REQUIREMENT

The tasks described above are expected to be completed within the two-year timeframe of this award. The following timeline for completion of individual tasks is based on an assumed starting date for the award of June 2005. If the starting date changes, dates in the timeline will be adjusted accordingly.