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Science and Technology Directorate Office of Research Infrastructure and Geophysical Division Focus Areas
- Advanced Materials Research Focus Area
- Blast/Projectile Analysis and Design of Protective Measures Focus Area
- Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructure Focus Area
- Physics and Mitigation of Natural Hazards Focus Area
- Modeling and Simulation for Decision Support Systems Focus Area
- Advanced Technologies for Emergency Management and First Responders Focus Area
- Advanced Surveillance and Control Technologies Focus Area
- Cyber-physical Systems Focus Area
Advanced Materials Research Focus Area
Focus Area Overview: Advanced materials to renew the infrastructure of the present and construct the infrastructure of the future to be resistant to many hazards and have sustainable properties. Hazards include blast, projectiles, fire, earthquakes, wind, flooding, deterioration and aging, corrosion, and combinations of these design challenges. Sustainable properties include self-healing, self-diagnosing, self-reporting, generating or conserving energy, minimal drain on non-renewable resources, conserving water, long lasting and affordable.
Blast/Projectile Analysis and Design of Protective Measures Focus Area
Focus Area Overview: Understanding the basic physics of blast effects on types of infrastructure that have not received extensive past testing and analysis (dams, levees, tunnels, bridges), improved understanding and modeling of blast effects on critical components of the infrastructure systems (towers, cables, submerged infrastructure), and design of protective measures to limit damage (i.e., articulated concrete mats installed externally to seal off damage to underwater tunnels, multi-layered liners for interior protection of tunnels) or expedient means to shore up damaged infrastructure to protect against further loss of life such as safe entry for first responders.
Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructure Focus Area
Focus Area Overview: Infrastructure designed in such a way that reduces the consumption of energy, clean water, and emission of pollutants, and aims at resource conservation over the life of the project. It should use high performance green materials that are self monitoring; self healing and that stand the test of time. It should be blast, earthquake, floods, wind, and blast resistance. Developing infrastructure that is sustainable means thinking differently about how we build, what we build, and whether we build at all. It means designing and maintaining infrastructures that are both, highly efficient and all hazard resistance.
Physics and Mitigation of Natural Hazards Focus Area
Focus Area Overview: By better understanding the physics that drive the internal processes and severity of natural hazards, we are better positioned to develop innovative, effective protective measures to reduce damages from natural hazards and more quickly recover from them. Example hazards include: hurricanes and the heat engine processes that control their intensity and resulting storm surge, high winds, erosion and flooding; wildfires, processes driven by high winds and drought, protective design and rapidly deployable protective measures such as the “fire proof house envelope” developed in the SAFE program; earthquakes and an ability to interpret signals from the earth to estimate the timing, location and severity of an earthquake.
Modeling and Simulation for Decision Support Systems Focus Area
Focus Area Overview: Modeling tools for a wide range of decision makers from local law enforcement to governors to the White House to evaluate alternative policies and actions to deal with emergencies and anticipate cascading effects across interdependent systems. Tools for real-time decision support in emergencies capable of integrating and assimilating multiple types of information and processing that information and presenting it in a manner useful to decision makers.
Advanced Technologies for Emergency Management and First Responders Focus Area
Focus Area Overview: Technologies that will fully enable emergency managers and first responders to effectively cope with multi-hazard emergencies such as advanced materials for protective clothing that report on the health of the first responder to decision support systems that provide real time logistical tracking and management of emergency supplies, equipment and personnel, advanced 3-D tracking technologies.
Advanced Surveillance and Control Technologies Focus Area
Focus Area Overview: Integration of multiple types of sensing technologies and intelligent algorithms to interpret the sensed data, and detect and report only actual anomalous activities.
Cyber-physical Systems Focus Area
Focus Area Overview: Cyber-physical systems (CPS), which are emerging trend across the globe, are characterized by tight coupling, coordination, and interconnections among sensing, communications, computational and physical resources. CPS are exhibited in many application areas including industrial control systems and are prevalent in almost every critical infrastructure sector including water, gas, electricity, transportation, chemical, and healthcare. Such interconnections form a complex system of systems. For example, the electric power grid of today forms one of the largest and most complex system of power generation, transmission, and distribution systems at local, regional, and national level. It is envisioned that the complexity of the cyber-physical systems of the future will far exceed that of today’s. Such a complexity poses several research challenges related to resiliency, vulnerability, threat, and recovery assessment issues. There is a need for models, theories, methods, and tools to address the security of cyber-physical systems taking into account the cyber and physical components of a system in an integrated and unified way and realizing the discrete and continuous aspects of the system.
This page was last reviewed / modified on May 19, 2009.