Current Projects and Grants
Active projects within the period of performance
NSF CNS: # 2115275
The planning grant will address the challenge of responding to sea level rise (SLR) in linked urban-rural systems located along the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Region (GCR). The typical SLR response strategies in the GCR are often practiced differentially across urban versus rural areas. The aim of this planning grant is to build a team that will engage diverse stakeholders working together toward a consolidated SLR adaptation strategy that enables urban and rural communities to collaboratively sustain the natural and physical infrastructure that links them together.
Compared with much of the world, the rate of SLR is quite high across much of the GCR and its landscape is a relatively low-lying coastal plain. Moreover, disadvantaged minority groups compose a large fraction of both the urban and rural population in this region, yielding a high degree of social vulnerability.
Mitsova remarks, “There is a growing understanding that the risks of sea level rise faced by communities require a collaborative foresight that will take into account a wide range of cross-sector interdependencies. The goal is to identify key issues and outline potential areas of future inquiry that would be most beneficial to the affected communities.”
The project team will bring together an inclusive and diverse group of researchers, community leaders, and policy makers who do not normally interact. This planning grant provides unique opportunities to (a) coalesce interdisciplinary teams, focus on the commonalities at the urban-rural linkages, (b) identify priorities, needs, and incentives of diverse stakeholders, (c) build knowledge and trust across these communities, and (d) formulate the research objectives, hypotheses, and methods for an innovative research network structure. The team’s will focus on the inclusion of minority constituencies, groups, and institutions that have been historically excluded from the SLR response conversation.
NSF RAPID Grant (CMMI #2028968)
Project Summary
As the 2020 hurricane season kicks into full gear in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the potential impact of storms will further exacerbate the vulnerabilities of renters and others living in precarious housing conditions.
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University, in collaboration with Georgia State University, have received a RAPID grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to capture momentary and time-bound data on the subjective perceptions of resilience of individuals and households, including their coping and adaptive capacities. These individuals and households face multiple challenges, including health risks, precarious housing conditions and exposure to weather and climate hazards. Within the context of rapidly evolving policy mandates and short-term measures such as moratoriums on evictions, the study will address the uncertainties stemming from the pandemic that vulnerable populations face during tropical weather events.
The research team will study areas that include counties in south and central Florida and the Panhandle, which are still recovering from Hurricanes Michael and Irma, and which saw an influx of displaced individuals from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. The unique and transformative elements of this research will be to advance knowledge and theory building on several topics related to housing, health and hazards.
The grant, titled “RAPID: Health, Housing, and Hazards: COVID-19, Subjective Resilience, Vulnerabilities, and Policy Evolution in Hurricane Prone Counties,” is spearheaded by Alka Sapat, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, Professor and Director, FAU’s School of Public Administration within the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters.
Sapat is collaborating with co-principal investigators Diana Mitsova, Ph.D., Associate Professor in FAU’s School of Urban and Regional Planning within the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, and Ann-Margaret Esnard, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Research and Strategic Initiatives at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. The research team has collaborated on several NSF-funded projects during the last decade.
For additional details, see https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/covid-hurricanes-nsf.php or visit the NSF website here.
Project Period: 05/15/2020 - 04/30/2021
Project Amount: $175,848
NSF CRISP Type 2 (CMMI #1541089)
Collaborative Research: Probabilistic Resilience Assessment of Interdependent Systems (PRAISys)
For additional information refer to the main project website.
The research team was awarded NSF supplemental funding to the amount of $158,000 in the Summer of 2019.
Total amount: $2.4M (FAU $296,793 + Supplement $58,000, total $346,793) [Collaborative award with Lehigh University and Georgia State University]
Grant period: 09/01/2015 – 08/31/2020
Project Team :
Florida Atlantic University
Diana Mitsova-Boneva , Principal Investigator, CMMI #1541089, Associate Professor of urban and regional planning
Alka Sapat , Associate Professor of public administration
Georgia State University
Ann-Margaret Esnard , Professor of public management and policy
Lehigh University
Paolo Bocchini , Principal Investigator, CMMI #1541177, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Brian Davison , Associate Professor of computer science and engineering
Alberto Lamadrid , Associate Professor of economics
Richard Sause , Joseph T. Stuart Professor of structural engineering
Lawrence Snyder , Professor of industrial and systems engineering
Wenjuan Sun , Research Associate of civil engineering
Project Summary
After a disruptive extreme event, such as an earthquake or severe storm, the socio-economic recovery of the affected region depends on the recovery of its infrastructure systems. Lifelines, such as power and water distribution systems, transportation networks, communication systems, and critical buildings have a primary role in disaster response, management, and long-term recovery. The failure to rapidly restore the services required for personal, social, and commercial activities leads to continued socio-economic losses and progressive depopulation. This collaborative project brings together scholars in Civil Engineering, Systems Engineering, Computer Science, Economics, Urban Planning, and Policy Making. Its purpose is to establish and demonstrate a comprehensive framework that combines models of individual infrastructure systems with models of their interdependencies for the assessment of interdependent infrastructure system resilience for extreme events under uncertainty. The “PRAISys” platform (Probabilistic Resilience Assessment of Interdependent Systems) will emphasize a probabilistic approach that permeates all aspects of the models, including the interdependencies. Some types of uncertainties that were not considered before (e.g., the possibility of using contingency plans that provide services without functioning infrastructure) will be classified; while mathematical and computational tools will be devised to capture their characteristics. PRAISys will enable better management and design of next generation infrastructure, more resilient to extreme events and to component failures under normal conditions. This will reduce the likelihood of extreme events becoming catastrophic in terms of casualties and injuries, long-lasting socio-economic losses, and environmental impact. The results of the research will be disseminated to the public in various forms: through series of seminars for professionals and administrators; by participating in Lehigh University’s STAR academy program for disadvantaged middle and high school students; through scientific publications and presentation; and by curriculum development.
The development, calibration, and validation of PRAISys will enable research on stochastic interdependencies among infrastructure systems in the wake of an extreme event. This requires advancements in several disciplines. For instance, a new hybrid reliability model, which combines graph theory for network analysis and classic system reliability to model the probabilistic dependencies among infrastructures will be studied. The new concept of “uncertain dependencies,” which are rigorously modeled and include “contingency plans” will be introduced. Advancements in stochastic network optimization will be sought, to predict the optimal strategies and to inform the disaster management. Social network data will be used as an additional source of information on the recovery of a region, in real time, mining public posts. A comprehensive decision framework will combine the results of the simulation platform with expert opinions and surveys to identify the importance of various aspects of recovery. Finally, new techniques for the collection of large sets of data from utility companies, local government, and other authorities will be studied.
Funding Agency : CMMI Division, National Science Foundation
OTHER ONGOING PROJECTS
Co-PI, Florida Watershed Study (with F. Bloetscher and D. Meeroff, PIs)
Funding Agency: Federal Emergency Management Agency/ Florida Department of Emergency Management
Total amount: $1.7M
Grant period: 09/01/2019 – 12/31/2020
Co-PI, Crash Risk for Low-Income and Minority Populations: An Examination of At-risk Population Segments and Underlying Risk Factors (with E. Dumbaugh, L. Merlin, and D. Saha)
Funding Agency: Florida Department of Transportation
Total amount: $83,115
Grant period: 2019-2020
PI, Crash Risk for Low-Income and Minority Populations: An Examination of At-Risk Population Segments and Underlying Risk Factors (with E. Dumbaugh)
Funding Agency: Collaborative Sciences Center on Road Safety (CSCRS) (National UTC)
Total amount: $33,316
Grant period: 2019-2020
Co-PI, Salty Urbanism Adaptation: Using Natural and Nature-based Features to Enhance Ecosystem Services and Quality of Life in Response to Sea-Level Rise (with J. Huber and C. Polsky)
Funding Agency: Florida Sea Grant
Amount: $184, 737
Grant period: 2019-2021
Co-PI, ADAPT: Adaptation Design and Planning Tool for Urban Areas in the Coastal Zone (PI Jeffery Huber, School of Architecture, FAU)
Funding Agency: Florida Sea Grant
Amount: $186,874
Grant period: 02/01/2016-01/31/2019
Co-PI, Analyzing the Effects of Neighborhood Characteristics and other Factors on the Disaster Readiness and Resilience of Older Adults in Southeast Florida (with Dr. Alka Sapat, School of Public Administration)
Funding Agency: CUES – Abacoa Endowment
Amount: $25,983
Grant period: 2019-2020
Consultant on the mentoring team for Dr. Lilah Besser’s NIA Grant 1 K01 AG063895-01A1 (PI: Dr. Besser, Lilah). Project Title: Longitudinal associations between neighborhood greenspace and brain aging in cognitively normal older adults
Funding Agency: National Institutes of Health
Total Amount: $632,070
Grant period: 05/15/2020 – 05/14/2025
RECENTLY COMPLETED PROJECTS
PI, The Nature Conservancy, “Suitability Analysis for Living Shorelines in Southeast Florida Estuarine Systems” (Amount: $17,228), Grant period: 8/31/2014 – 01/31/2016
Co-PI, Kresge Foundation, “Impacts of Sea Level Rise on Public Health in Southeast Florida” (PI, Roderick King, Florida Institute for Health Innovations, Dr. Len Berry & Dr. Colin Polsky, FAU), (12/2013 – 12/2015), $250,000.
Co-PI (Lead Co-Author), a research grant awarded by the State of Florida for “A SUS Climate Change Task Force: Science addressing the needs of Florida Agencies, Industry and Citizenry” (with Principal Investigators: Len Berry and Marguerite Koch-Rose (1/11-1/12); $175,000.
Co-PI, USGS, “Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Framework for USGS Ecosystem Portfolio Model” (with Principal Investigator: Ann-Margaret Esnard; 2012, $23,274.
PI , The National Park Service (in collaboration with the FAU Environmental Sciences Everglades Fellowship Initiative), “Seasonal Flushing of Oil and Grease from Urban Runoff to the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve” (4/09-5/11), with Jaap Vos as Co-PI; $46,854
Co-PI (as a University stakeholder), Rooftop Solar Challenge Phase II funded by DOE, federal flow-through with Broward County as the lead agency, 09/2013 – 07/2015; $1.575 million (FAU $20,000).
Collaborator, National Science Foundation [CMMI #0726808] “Displacement Due to Catastrophic Hurricanes: Assessing Potential Magnitude and Policy Implications for Housing and Land Development” [2009-2010, with Principal Investigators: Ann-Margaret Esnard, and A. Sapat, $301,643]
In the news:
New funding for FAU projects, Florida Climate Institute
Research