Award Abstract # 2114474
EAGER International Type II: Inclusiveness and Diversity as Building Blocks of Resilient International Research Teams in the Age of COVID-19

NSF Org: OISE
Office of International Science and Engineering
Recipient: UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
Initial Amendment Date: January 25, 2021
Latest Amendment Date: May 21, 2021
Award Number: 2114474
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Maija Kukla
mkukla@nsf.gov
 (703)292-4940
OISE
 Office of International Science and Engineering
O/D
 Office Of The Director
Start Date: February 1, 2021
End Date: January 31, 2024 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $297,955.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $297,955.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2021 = $297,955.00
History of Investigator:
  • Gregory Kiker (Principal Investigator)
    gkiker@ufl.edu
  • Olivier Walther (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Erica Odera (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of Florida
1523 UNION RD RM 207
GAINESVILLE
FL  US  32611-1941
(352)392-3516
Sponsor Congressional District: 03
Primary Place of Performance: University of Florida
FL  US  32611-2002
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
03
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): NNFQH1JAPEP3
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): International Research Collab
Primary Program Source: 01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 7391
Program Element Code(s): 729800
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.079

ABSTRACT

Recent COVID-related events have significantly disrupted many international teams, especially those focused on basic and applied research in developing countries. Collaborative groups at all stages of development are impacted, including long-standing teams, recently established teams, and groups in the making. While impromptu transitions to online, video conferencing have allowed basic communications to continue as a stopgap measure, significant knowledge gaps remain in building resilient, adaptive and innovative research teams into the post-COVID future. Traditionally, international research teams have been built based on efficiency in satisfying funding priorities, past alliances, ease of communication and similarity of institutional culture. Such teams may not be inclusive and diverse beyond a superficial level required to be competitive by funding priorities.

We hypothesize that international research teams can be designed to be more resilient and that inclusiveness and diversity are key considerations in building resilient teams. We propose to study three exemplars of trans-disciplinary research groups, all working in Africa on complex socio-ecological issues ranging from food security, land use planning and ecosystem services. (1) Large, successful, well-established teams, (2) Recently established teams (FY 2020) disrupted in their first year with COVID-related limitations and (3) New teams attempting to form in the post-COVID, ?new normal? of closed borders and virus hotspots. Team resilience will be quantified using semi-quantitative (Resilience Matrix after Linkov et al., 2013) and quantitative (Network Science) approaches. The Resilience Matrix approach integrates multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to integrate disparate sources of quantitative and qualitative information regarding team resilience in Respond/Recover/Adapt phases of resilience across different domains of collaborative activities (physical, cyber and social). Instead of utilizing aggregated metrics, a network science approach would represent team connectivity across the same domains as networks interconnected by links and nodes. These interconnected networks will be stress-tested through disruption of link and node connectivity or degradation of functional recovery, efficiency and adaptation capacities. Subsequently, team designs and connection structures will be compared for emergent qualities related to team performance. Our goal is to quantify resilience in several research teams and assess how the inclusiveness and diversity results in better research outcomes along with recovery and adaptation to the COVID-19 crisis.

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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Linkov, Igor and Trump, Benjamin and Kiker, Greg "Diversity and inclusiveness are necessary components of resilient international teams" Humanities and Social Sciences Communications , v.9 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01117-4 Citation Details

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

The COVID-19 pandemic along with regularly occurring climate shocks and infrastructure failures have highlighted significant gaps in social and infrastructure resilience. There has been increasing interest in resilience-by-design and resilience-by-intervention actions that create and maintain resilient teams and their interactions with critical infrastructure. Within this resilience-building effort, diversity and inclusion (D&I) concepts are often implemented with an expectation of benefits towards institutional goals. This is interesting as most D&I criteria are computed with respect to individuals and reported institutionally with indirect linkages to team performance, outcome efficiency or overall resilience. Our project suggests that this current focus undercounts the potential benefits of D&I towards creating resilient teams and misses potential trade-offs with shorter term efficiency.  With each cascading failure in infrastructure or social systems, institutions and their stakeholders are seeking practical yet innovative tools to plan and implement resilience.

Our project consisted of two primary goals, (1) survey and analysis of existing international research teams, networks and institutions for resilience and expanded D&I metrics and (2) development of network/decision analytical/stress-testing tools to explore resilience dynamics to both internal relationships as well as to external system shocks. Efforts towards the first goal gathered resilience and D&I criteria from a variety of disciplines, surveyed international team members for their COVID responses and measured social networks for trust and influence on international teams. Efforts towards the second goal developed novel coevolutionary, adaptive network and decision analysis software that integrates individual, team and institutional dynamics to stress-test resilience in its various operational phases (Planning, Absorbing, Responding and Adapting). Practical elements of these stress-testing tools were applied to COVID-19 and climate-induced shocks to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) across critical performance sectors.   Our research showed modern airports are increasingly vital yet vulnerable human/cyber/physical infrastructure hubs, requiring proactive resilience investments complementing traditional risk mitigation and emergency response practices. Despite multifarious uncertainties, our research developed modular tools that integrate qualitative expertise with network simulations and decision modeling for evidence-based evaluation and upgrading of human and infrastructure resilience and functionality.

 


Last Modified: 05/14/2024
Modified by: Gregory A Kiker

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