Opportunity number
NSF 18-523
Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Program
Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes 2.0 FY18 (CRISP 2.0)
Link
Website
Due date
March 07, 2018
Location
National
Sector
Infrastructure
Project funding
Smaller Projects: 2-3 yrs, up to $750,000. Larger projects:3-4 yrs, total budget from $750,001 - 2 million.
Program funding
$1.34B
Funding size
Up to $5M

Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes (CRISP 2.0)

RFP Summary provided by the agency

This CRISP 2.0 solicitation responds both to national needs on the resilience of critical infrastructures and to increasing NSF emphasis on transdisciplinary research. In this context, the solicitation is one element of the NSFwide Risk and Resilience activity, with the overarching goal of advancing knowledge in support of improvement of the nation’s infrastructure resilience. The devastating effects of recent disasters such as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria have underscored that a great deal remains to be done.

What is the mission and focus of the program: research, social, economic or others?

The goals of the Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes 2.0 (CRISP 2.0) solicitation are to:

  • Foster an interdisciplinary research community of engineers and social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) scientists who work synergistically together for innovation in the design and management of infrastructures as processes and services.
  • Transform relevant fields by re-thinking ICIs as processes and services that may have complementary and/or substitutional roles with each other.
  • Create innovations in ICIs that contribute directly and positively to people’s quality of life, spur economic growth, and respond to both internal perturbations and external shocks, regardless of whether they are natural, technological or human induced.

These goals lead to the following specific objectives for this solicitation:

  • To generate new knowledge, approaches, and solutions to resilience and improve the capability of existing and future ICIs to respond to internal and external changes;
  • To create innovative, theoretical frameworks and multidisciplinary models of ICIs, processes and services, capable of modeling, monitoring, and predicting complex behaviors and outcomes in response to both internal and external shocks;
  • To develop integrative frameworks to understand interdependencies among ICIs and leverage them to enhance the processes and services that ICIs provide;
  • To study socioeconomic, cultural, political, legal, and psychological and other obstacles to improving ICIs and to identify strategies for overcoming these obstacles; and
  • To support the creation, curation, and use of publicly accessible data on infrastructure systems and processes, whether in the context of explanation, prediction or modeling.

How do you submit to this opportunity?

Proposers may opt to submit proposals in response to this Program Solicitation via Grants.gov or via the NSF FastLane system. see: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf18001

Who are the target applicants: cities, universities, companies, small business, nonprofits, or others?

Universities and Colleges – Universities and two- and four-year colleges (including community colleges) accredited in, and having a campus located in, the US acting on behalf of their faculty members. Such organizations also are referred to as academic institutions.

Example project(s) summaries from past RFPs:

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1832713&HistoricalAwards=false CRISP 2.0 Type 1: Interdependent Water Infrastructure in a Potable Reuse System. January 1, 2019. Amount Awarded: $747,026,026. The overall objective of this Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes (CRISP) research is to characterize the interdependence and resilience of flood control, wastewater, and drinking water infrastructure, and, in particular, the impact on water quality of unsheltered homeless encampments with insufficient sanitation facilities and management. Homelessness is one of the most significant issues affecting human health, well-being, and ecosystem services in the United States. The problem is particularly evident in Las Vegas where 67 percent of the homeless population is unsheltered. This raises concerns related to the public and environmental health implications of human fecal contamination of local water systems, specifically flood control infrastructure. Similar to many cities throughout the US, Las Vegas also discharges treated wastewater effluent upstream of its drinking water intakes. Therefore, if the wastewater and drinking water infrastructure are not sufficiently resilient, the added stress from flood control infrastructure may create a positive feedback loop leading to greater exposure to contaminants of emerging concern and more frequent outbreaks of waterborne disease. This research targets two long-term outcomes related to these issues: (1) generation of data and models that can be used to increase understanding of the broader public health implications of homelessness and (2) development of tools and products to effectively disseminate this knowledge to contribute to more effective measures to address homelessness and mitigate related impacts on public and environmental health. Although this research focuses on Las Vegas, concerns related to the nexus of homelessness and water quality exist in numerous cities throughout the country, thereby offering ample opportunity for replication in other regions.

(ii) Example project(s) summaries from past RFPs:

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1832683&HistoricalAwards=false; CRISP 2.0 Type 1: Collaborative Research: Distributed Edge Computing to Improve Resilience of Interdependent Systems. January 1, 2019. Amount Awarded $193,539. This Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes (CRISP) research advances the body of knowledge on interdependent infrastructure resilience of systems through utilizing distributed assets to minimize cascading failures under extreme events. It is hypothesized that the domino effect of service disruptions is rooted in the vulnerability of the backbone-versus-edge relationship among the systems. For example, a backbone component in one system, such as natural gas-fueled power plants, is only at the end of the supply chain of natural gas (termed as the edge). Consequently, a backbone failure in one system (such as natural gas pipeline outage) can create the domino effect of failures through the entire interdependent systems. One way to alleviate this backbone-vs-edge tension is to bring assets to the edge (referred to as distributed resources), hence releasing the reliance of one infrastructure system on the others. This research will establish a new framework to effectively coordinate among the distributed resources, without requiring centralized coordination. Such a framework will be tested under various hazards including urban droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes. In addition, economic benefits of the added resilience will be quantified to help policy makers with more efficient solutions for improving resilience without sacrificing economic growth. The research will be widely disseminated to scientific communities and public via publishing in scientific outlets as well as leveraging press releases and media tools. Moreover, this research-integrated program and commitment to enhanced diversity promises to inspire underrepresented groups in STEM, and train the next generation of interdisciplinary scholars.

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