NSF invests in civil infrastructure resilient to climate change
The U.S. National Science Foundation has invested $3.5 million in ambitious new civil infrastructure research to create transformative and equitable solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Civil infrastructure includes water, electricity, transportation, buildings and other systems that support and protect communities in rural and urban settings. Infrastructure systems require large capital investments and are expected to provide essential services for decades.
"While infrastructure is designed to be resilient in a natural disaster, climate change brings new challenges, such as increased flooding and higher temperatures, and reinforces the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from infrastructure," said Daniel Linzell, director of the NSF Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI). "This NSF investment will help our nation develop new solutions for climate adaptation and mitigation in the design, construction and operation of current and future civil infrastructure."
The five new research projects will advance the sustainability, resilience, equity and accessibility of civil infrastructure under the evolving conditions induced by climate change:
- Climate-Resilient Infrastructure Adaptations for Maladaptive Levee Networks, Pennsylvania State University.
- A Digital Twin Modeling Framework for Climate Adaptive Vertical Infrastructure, University of Pittsburgh.
- Enhancing Soil-Based Infrastructure Resilience to Climate Change: Harnessing the Potential of Fractured Soil by Adding Biopolymers, San Diego State University and University of Utah.
- Equitable Adaptive Strategies for Flood Protection Infrastructure under Current and Future Compound Hazards, Tufts University and University of California, Irvine.
- Landslide Triggering of Thermally Sensitive Slopes due to Climate Change, University of Colorado Boulder and Duke University.
These projects are supported through the CiviL Infrastructure research for climate change Mitigation and Adaptation (CLIMA) opportunity from CMMI in the NSF Directorate for Engineering. The division continues to accept CLIMA proposals and plans to support additional CLIMA projects in Fiscal Year 2024.
Learn more at www.nsf.gov.