PD-05-1743 National Facilities

The Operations Engineering (OE) program supports fundamental research on advanced analytical methods for improving operations in complex decision-driven environments. Analytical methods include, but are not limited to, deterministic and stochastic modeling, optimization, decision and risk analysis, data science, and simulation. Methodological research is highly encouraged but must be motivated by problems that have potential for high impact in engineering applications. Application domains of particular interest to the program arise in commercial enterprises (e.g., production/manufacturing systems and distribution of goods, delivery of services), the public sector/government (e.g., public safety and security), and public/private partnerships (e.g., health care, environment and energy). The program also welcomes operations research in new and emerging domains and addressing systemic societal or technological problems. The OE program particularly values cross-disciplinary proposals that leverage application-specific expertise with strong quantitative analysis in a decision-making context. Proposals for methodological research that are not strongly motivated by high-potential engineering applications are not appropriate for this program. PIs are encouraged to send any program inquiries to both Program Directors.

The Engineering for Civil Infrastructure (ECI) program supports fundamental research in geotechnical, structural, materials, architectural, and coastal engineering. The ECI program promotes research that can shape the future of the nation's physical civil infrastructure and that can contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation, and hazards and disaster resilience. Types of civil infrastructure that the ECI program considers include, but are not limited to, buildings, residential construction, earth and earth retaining structures, and components of flood protection systems; water, waste disposal, and wastewater systems; energy infrastructure (excluding nuclear); and transportation systems (excluding pavements). Both disciplinary and convergent research that can address the challenges of physical civil infrastructure to be resilient and sustainable over its service lifetime are of particular interest. Broader impacts of ECI research include fostering community welfare for an equitable and prosperous nation and promoting environmentally friendly, circular economy policies. The ECI program supports research that advances knowledge on the behavior of physical civil infrastructure subjected to and interacting with the natural environment during construction; under service and long-term conditions, including increased demands due to climate change adaptation and other emerging stressors; and under conditions caused by single or multiple extreme hazard events (extreme weather, windstorms, earthquakes, tsunamis, storm surges, landslides, and fire, including wildland-urban interface fire). The ECI program also supports research on geomaterials and infrastructure materials utilized in load-bearing systems as well as in non-structural systems. Of particular interest is experimental and analytical/computational research to advance the fundamental understanding of coupled multi-physics, multi-scale (spatial and temporal), multi-functional behavior of these materials and their intended use in civil infrastructure. The ECI program supports research on civil infrastructure that contributes to the National Science Foundation's role in the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) and the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP). Principal Investigators are encouraged to leverage NSF's investments in the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) experimental, computational modeling and simulation, and data resources ( https://www.designsafe-ci.org/ ) in their research to accelerate advances needed for reducing the impacts of natural hazards on civil infrastructure. The NHERI Science Plan ( https://www.designsafe-ci.org/facilities/nco/science-plan/ ) offers a range of research topics that could benefit from the use of NHERI resources and are relevant to the ECI program. The ECI program does not support research that addresses natural resource exploration or recovery, investigates blasts and explosions, develops sensor and measurement technologies, or focuses on hazard characterization. The ECI program only supports fundamental research topics for civil infrastructure with a strong grounding in theory. Topics which fall within the mission for research and/or development of other federal and state agencies are appropriate for the ECI program only when addressing fundamental scientific questions. Research on natural hazard characterization is supported through programs in the NSF Directorate for Geosciences. Proposers are actively encouraged to email a one-page project summary to the ECI Program Officers before submitting a full proposal for guidance on whether the proposed research topic falls within the scope of the ECI program; this guidance especially should be requested for multi-disciplinary research proposals, proposals for which research and/or development on the subject civil infrastructure(s) are also supported by other federal and state agencies, and proposals that consider civil infrastructure not listed above.

The Engineering Design and Systems Engineering (EDSE) program supports fundamental research that advances design science and/or systems science through the creation of new knowledge about the design of engineered artifacts. Engineered artifacts include, but are not limited to, devices, products, processes, platforms, materials, organizations, systems, and systems of systems. The program focuses on design as a system, in which designers, the artifacts they create, the methods they use to create them, and the environment in which this occurs are all subject to rigorous scientific inquiry, along with the interactions among these elements. The EDSE program strongly encourages proposals that embrace the multidisciplinary nature of design and supports well-defined collaborations of experts in design science and/or systems science with experts in other domains, including (but not limited to) the social, behavioral, computational, and natural (biological and physical) sciences. Competitive proposals will be firmly grounded in theory, will demonstrate the potential of the proposed work to improve design, and will include a plan to rigorously assess the performance and effectiveness of the proposed research methods across all domains involved. In particular, the EDSE program supports fundamental contributions in areas that include but are not limited to design representation; design optimization; design validation; mechanism design; robotics and intelligent system design; design of engineered materials systems; design cognition; design collaboration; data science and artificial intelligence in design; design in under-resourced communities; immersive design; and design at extreme scales and in extreme environments. Prospective investigators are encouraged to discuss their research ideas with the Program Director in advance of proposal preparation and submission.