Iris Tien

NSF invests $20 million to enhance resilience of critical infrastructure

Press Release 15-108  |  September 14, 2015

Infrastructure must outsmart disruptions to continue delivery of essential goods and services

Americans rely upon critical infrastructure systems to provide services such as clean water, electricity, transportation and healthcare. These systems are becoming increasingly interconnected, while our demands on them and the hazards they face grow.

To address our nation’s critical need for more resilient infrastructure and enhanced services, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has invested $20 million in new fundamental research to transform infrastructure, from physical structures to responsive systems.

“The new understanding of infrastructure, combined with advances in modeling and smart technologies, promises an opportunity for important, groundbreaking discoveries to improve resilience,” said Pramod Khargonekar, NSF assistant director for engineering. “These research investments will help support national security, economy and people for decades to come.”

The projects are the first in a new NSF activity known as CRISP: Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes. These three- and four-year projects, each with funding up to $2.5 million, are part of NSF’s multiyear initiative on risk and resilience.

NSF’s fiscal year 2015 investment in CRISP is a multidisciplinary collaboration between the Directorates for Engineering, Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE).

“Building a more resilient society requires making sound research investments not only in understanding the technology that supports critical infrastructure but also in understanding the human behaviors that determine how technology is put to use,” said Fay Cook, NSF assistant director for SBE. “Multidisciplinary, cooperative research efforts like CRISP are essential for understanding how behavior and technology intersect.”

Infrastructure of the future

CRISP researchers will study design and performance of these interdependent systems to enable them to perform, despite disruptions and failures from any cause, whether natural, technological or malicious.

This knowledge will lead to innovations in critical infrastructure, so that communications, power and water supplies, and other community support functions are strengthened, as these systems perform sustainably and securely, delivering even a broader range of goods and services.

CRISP project outcomes will develop fundamental knowledge needed to understand interdependencies and their impacts and also improve the effectiveness and efficiency with which infrastructure systems deliver those goods and services.

“The tight integration of computation into physical systems and infrastructure is enabling the smart technologies of today,” said Jim Kurose, NSF assistant director for CISE. “NSF’s investments to enhance safety, security and resiliency of our interdependent critical infrastructure systems are an important step in realizing the smart and connected communities of the future.”

Investments from the CRISP program were announced as part of NSF’s commitments at a White House event today launching the National Smart Cities Initiative.

NSF-funded 12 CRISP projects in FY 2015

…

Multi-Scale Modeling Framework for the Assessment and Control of Resilient Interdependent Critical Infrastructure Systems: Iris Tien of the Georgia Institute of Technology will lead the project in partnership with Georgia Tech colleagues Seymour Goodman and Calton Pu (1541074).