Award Abstract # 1846069
CAREER: Household Network Modeling and Empathic Learning for Integrating Social Equality into Infrastructure Resilience Assessment

NSF Org: CMMI
Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation
Recipient: TEXAS A&M ENGINEERING EXPERIMENT STATION
Initial Amendment Date: February 6, 2019
Latest Amendment Date: June 5, 2025
Award Number: 1846069
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Daan Liang
dliang@nsf.gov
 (703)292-2441
CMMI
 Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation
ENG
 Directorate for Engineering
Start Date: February 15, 2019
End Date: September 30, 2026 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $500,000.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $570,000.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2019 = $500,000.00
FY 2020 = $70,000.00
History of Investigator:
  • Ali Mostafavi (Principal Investigator)
    ali@resilitix.ai
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station
3124 TAMU
COLLEGE STATION
TX  US  77843-3124
(979)862-6777
Sponsor Congressional District: 10
Primary Place of Performance: Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station
3136 TAMU
College Station
TX  US  77843-3136
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
10
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): QD1MX6N5YTN4
Parent UEI: QD1MX6N5YTN4
NSF Program(s): CAREER: FACULTY EARLY CAR DEV,
HDBE-Humans, Disasters, and th,
Special Initiatives
Primary Program Source: 01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 041E, 042E, 043E, 091Z, 1045
Program Element Code(s): 104500, 163800, 164200
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.041

ABSTRACT

This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) project seeks to understand the interaction between households and infrastructure networks in disasters with the goal to break new ground on integrating social inequality considerations into infrastructure resilience research and education. The research will examine household network dynamics influencing disparities in risks among vulnerable populations (e.g., older adults and low income families) due to infrastructure service disruptions. The education objective is to integrate empathy and human-centric considerations with technical concepts in training next-generation practitioners and researchers of resilient infrastructure. This scientific research contribution thus supports NSF's mission to promote the progress of science and to advance our national welfare. In this case, the anticipated outcomes will yield transformative ideas to enhance how infrastructure systems can best be produced and managed to promote socially just and resilient services for different subpopulations.

This project involves an integrative research, education, and outreach plan. The research component of this project will: (1) empirically characterize the influence of household-level socio-demographic characteristics, expectations, norms, and other factors on service gaps and adjustment practices when infrastructure disruptions occur; (2) model and analyze household social networks at the neighborhood scale to determine the effects of social network structure and stability on the diffusion of information and adjustment practices through social media; and (3) analyze the interplay between infrastructure networks and household social networks to examine the spatial patterns of risk disparity among different sub-populations at the urban scale. The research approach involves methodological fusion among household surveys, fine-grained social media data analytics, and computational agent-based modeling to extract, characterize, simulate, and examine household networks. The research approach will be tested in the context of Hurricane Harvey in Houston with a focus on electricity, water, and road disruptions. The education component of this project will create and test an empathic learning model consisting of multiple human-centric course modules, interdisciplinary service-learning projects, and seminars to promote empathy and critical thinking skills in participating students. The outreach activities and service learning projects will focus on underserved neighborhoods in Houston and will involve deep community engagement with stakeholders and residents to broadly disseminate findings. These integrative research, education, and outreach elements will promote convergence research for integrating social equality with infrastructure resilience and better incorporate the needs of vulnerable populations in planning and prioritization of infrastructure services. The project will also lead to capacity building for underserved communities, as well as resilience-aware and empathic engineers of the future.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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(Showing: 1 - 10 of 37)
Afroogh, Saleh and Esmalian, Amir and Donaldson, Jonan and Mostafavi, Ali "Empathic Design in Engineering Education and Practice: An Approach for Achieving Inclusive and Effective Community Resilience" Sustainability , v.13 , 2021 https://doi.org/10.3390/su13074060 Citation Details
Coleman, Natalie and Esmalian, Amir and Lee, Cheng-Chun and Gonzales, Eulises and Koirala, Pranik and Mostafavi, Ali "Energy inequality in climate hazards: Empirical evidence of social and spatial disparities in managed and hazard-induced power outages" Sustainable Cities and Society , v.92 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2023.104491 Citation Details
Coleman, Natalie and Esmalian, Amir and Mostafavi, Ali "Anatomy of susceptibility for shelter-in-place households facing infrastructure service disruptions caused by natural hazards" International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction , v.50 , 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101875 Citation Details
Coleman, Natalie and Esmalian, Amir and Mostafavi, Ali "Equitable Resilience in Infrastructure Systems: Empirical Assessment of Disparities in Hardship Experiences of Vulnerable Populations during Service Disruptions" Natural Hazards Review , v.21 , 2020 https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)NH.1527-6996.0000401 Citation Details
Coleman, Natalie and Liu, Chenyue and Zhao, Yiqing and Mostafavi, Ali "Lifestyle pattern analysis unveils recovery trajectories of communities impacted by disasters" Humanities and Social Sciences Communications , v.10 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02312-7 Citation Details
Coleman, Natalie and Li, Xiangpeng and Comes, Tina and Mostafavi, Ali "Weaving equity into infrastructure resilience research: a decadal review and future directions" npj Natural Hazards , v.1 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1038/s44304-024-00022-x Citation Details
Dargin, Jennifer and Berk, Alex and Mostafavi, Ali "Assessment of household-level food-energy-water nexus vulnerability during disasters" Sustainable Cities and Society , v.62 , 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2020.102366 Citation Details
Dargin, Jennifer and Mostafavi, Ali "Well-Being and Infrastructure Disruptions during Disasters: An Empirical Analysis of Household Impact Disparities during Hurricane Harvey" ASCE Construction Research Congress 2020 , 2020 https://doi.org/ Citation Details
Dargin, Jennifer S. and Fan, Chao and Mostafavi, Ali "Vulnerable populations and social media use in disasters: Uncovering the digital divide in three major U.S. hurricanes" International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction , v.54 , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102043 Citation Details
Dargin, Jennifer S. and Mostafavi, Ali "Human-centric infrastructure resilience: Uncovering well-being risk disparity due to infrastructure disruptions in disasters" PLOS ONE , v.15 , 2020 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234381 Citation Details
Esmalian, Amir and Coleman, Natalie and Yuan, Faxi and Xiao, Xin and Mostafavi, Ali "Characterizing equitable access to grocery stores during disasters using location-based data" Scientific Reports , v.12 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23532-y Citation Details
(Showing: 1 - 10 of 37)

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