Current Funded Projects

SOCIOTECHNICAL WATER INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS 

NNA Research: Collaborative Research: Infrastructure Interdependencies in the Arctic: Reframing the Urban-Rural Interface

Critical infrastructure services (CISs), such as water, transportation, energy, communications, public health, and waste, are essential for the well-being and economic livelihood of Alaskan communities. We do not currently understand how CISs are interconnected in Arctic communities; however, we do know that these interconnections are sources of both resilience and vulnerability. This project aims to architect infrastructure interdependencies within hub communities and at the interfaces between urban hubs and rural Alaska Native villages. In doing so, this work paves the way for future research by providing new empirical data and creating a set of management approaches that can help communities immediately improve their CISs.

Funded by NSF award # 2318217 |  Collaborators: Drs. Lauryn SearingKeri Stephens, Jane Lin, Jeni Hebert-Beirne 

SAI-R: Culturally Appropriate Language and Messaging for Influencing End User Behavior During Impending Infrastructure Failures

The infrastructure supporting the public water supply is often the most vulnerable during times of disaster.  Water utilities must explain to the public why conservation, boiling water, and protecting pipes are essential to avoid catastrophic infrastructure failure. Yet utilities typically lack the resources and expertise needed to effectively communicate the importance of collaborative efforts to their end-users during such critical times. One challenge is the growing number of communication channels, including social media, text messaging, and wireless emergency alerts. Another challenge is anticipating cultural differences and the need to communicate effectively with diverse populations, including Spanish-speaking and older adult populations. This project designs and tests communication strategies that utilities can use with the public during disasters. The goal is to understand system vulnerability concerns during disasters and to identify current communication practices.  By focusing on effective communication with diverse populations, water utilities will be in a stronger position to protect this vital infrastructure.

Funded by NSF award # 2228706   |  Collaborators: Drs. Keri Stephens, Matthew McGlone, Roselia Mendez Murillo, Sergio Castellanos

Assessing the Impact of APRIME on Industrial Sector Supply Portfolios: Chemical Industry and Data Center/Large Campus Case Studies

All too often when moving from science to practice, new technologies fail not because of the technology itself, but due to the misalignment of the organization’s priorities, growth trajectories, resources, capacity, or needs (among other reasons). Through this work, we creates a framework that can be used to identify potential opportunities within an industry that satisfy technoeconomic and organizational constraints in that situational context.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office, Advanced Manufacturing Office under Funding Opportunity Announcement DE-FOA-0001905   |  Collaborators: Drs. Lynn Katz, Lauryn Searing

Contextual Factors that Influence Water Crisis Recovery: A Study Of Macro Variables Of Crisis Communication

In this research, we seek to understand recovery beyond traditional micro measures (e.g., water quality), through a macro sociocultural lens that incorporates lived experiences and technical performance. This work challenges the dominant definition of recovery in civil engineering through contributions from crisis communication and public relations,  specifically from a critical cultural perspective. We believe this research can serve as a catalyst to understand equitable recovery broadly in the built environment. Drawing on the fields of civil engineering and crisis communication in public relations, in this project we examine the interplay of macro variables in water crisis recovery. Specifically we ask, how do the macro variables of (a) political system; (b) legal system; (c) economic development; (d) societal culture; and (e) media systems impact water system recovery?

Funded by the University of Texas at Austin Vice President for Research, Scholarship and Creative Endeavors Office through the Associate Professor Experimental (APX)  |  Collaborator: Dr. E. Ciszek

Collaborative Research: NNA Research: Capturing Indigenous Knowledge to Co-Design more Effective Operations, Maintenance and Management of Water Infrastructures

Rural water infrastructure systems in the Arctic have many key issues. They are often in remote locations that are hard to reach. The practical implication of this is that it often takes several days to bring adequate supplies and outside expertise when problems arise in the system. Therefore, to ensure continuous service in these systems, the local community and on-site operators have outsized responsibility in operating, managing, and maintaining the system. Additionally, these systems were based upon engineering knowledge that was not well-grounded in local community experience and know-how. Thus, besides having to do much of the operation, management, and maintenance on their own, they have to do so on a system from which they are unfamiliar, and whose underlying assumptions differ markedly from their own sensibilities. How then do we ensure continuous water system in such an extreme operating environment (e.g., far to reach and does not match local know-how and experience)? This is the question that the researchers are hoping to address through revising water operator support material to better tie such water infrastructure systems to local know-how and resources that will better ensure more reliable and continuous water service.

Funded by NSF award # 2127353   |  Collaborators: Drs. Daniel Armanios, Lynn Katz, Suzanne Pierce

RAPID: Implications of Utilities Decision-making and Communication Strategies in Urban Populations Response under Extreme Weather Events

Through this project we will investigate how local utilities develop their communication strategy plans and decision making under an extreme weather event and identify both inefficiencies in the communications and decision-making approaches to enhance communications and ensure more equitable outcomes. The extreme weather events caused by the Polar Vortex in spring 2021 impacted Texas’ energy and water infrastructures, leaving millions of Texans without access to these basic services. An issue that played a role in exacerbating the impacts incurred by communities was the inadequate communication between utilities and the community. This RAPID project seeks to understand inefficiencies in the communication approaches from utilities to their community-based customers as well as decision making when grid failures forced blackouts. The empirical knowledge derived from this work will support research at the intersection of disasters, utilities’ communications, and impact on households and the built environment. Additionally, findings have the potential to help identify opportunities for utilities to build resilience in their decision making and communication efforts. The project team will create technical guidance for utilities to proactively strengthen communication strategies thereby promote NSF’s mission of generating science to help advance the health, prosperity, and welfare of our nation’s communities.

Funded by NSF award # 2129801   |  Collaborators: Drs. Sergio Castellanos, Keri Stephens

Collaborative Research: Urban Watershed Evolution – Novel Temporal Perspectives on the Hydrologic Impacts and Positive Unintended Consequences of Failing Municipal Infrastructure

Modern societies depend on rural and urban watersheds in a symbiotic relationship that requires balance among unintended anthropogenic inputs, local hydrology, and riparian ecosystem health. Municipalities are increasingly challenged to use aged and failing infrastructure to deliver a continuous supply of clean water, and to return and treat wastewater. Major consequences of leaking infrastructure for urban streams are changes in geomorphology and degraded chemical, physical, and biological conditions, collectively dubbed the ‘urban stream syndrome’. By using Sr isotopes as natural tracers, we show that some Austin-area streams are comprised of up to 90% of tap water and wastewater (collectively “municipal water” hereafter) during base flow. A significant unknown is the fate of municipal water after it leaves the engineered system and enters the natural hydrologic system, leading to several key research questions: How does municipal water geochemically evolve once it is transmitted to the natural hydrologic system? When, and under what conditions, did infrastructure failure begin, and how has it progressed over time?

Funded by NSF Award #2055536 | Collaborators: Drs. Jay Banner, Bryan Black

SOCIOTECHNICAL SYSTEMS 

Disaster Continuity for Businesses and Communities in Rural Texas: Investigating Infrastructure, Communication, and Planning Needs

Disasters, including floods, fires, weather events, and hurricanes, are frequent in Texas. They affect both large and small businesses and highlight the vulnerabilities of infrastructural systems such as power, water, and broadband connectivity. While some disaster-recovery resources are available for businesses and communities in Texas (e.g., Government Land Office, FEMA, SBA), small, rural communities often lack the resources to plan for and respond to disasters. This project focuses on the Gulf Coast region of Texas and uses an interdisciplinary approach to understand the social and technical aspects of disaster-resilience efforts needed to help small businesses and communities in Texas. This two-year project will begin by analyzing local disaster communication plans in place that target small businesses and community organizations.  Next, the team will dissect the programs and messaging around disaster preparedness and recovery that effectively reach small businesses. Undergraduate students within the IC2 Home to Texas program will be an integral part of the team, since they can provide their local community knowledge to the project.  Tangible outcomes of this project include creating local disaster resilience training kits (based off the FLASH and FEMA disaster continuity workshop model), mapping the assets of communities, and raising awareness around the increasing needs for disaster planning.

Funded by the University of Texas at Austin IC² Institute | Collaborators: Drs. Keri Stephens, Sharon Strover

SETx-UIFL: Equitable solutions for communities caught between floods and air pollution

Our Urban Integrated Field Lab has the goal of addressing the following questions: Which processes and variables need to be captured in regional scale hydrological and atmospheric models so that they are representative of the conditions experienced by local communities and help inform adaptation strategies? And how can we understand the linkages between and within natural, built, and social systems in urbanized regions to better support natural and human resilience? My specific role on this is to assess the values of stakeholders and how these values change the portfolio of satisficing stormwater infrastructure  alternatives co-designed with communities. I will also measure how these values and problem definitions change throughout the co-design process.

Funded by the Department of Energy Urban Integrated Field Laboratories  | Collaborators: Drs. Paola Passalacqua, Fernanda Leite, Katherine Lieberknecht

SOCIOTECHNICAL CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS 

The Cost of Controversy on a Project: Incorporating Valid Stakeholders

The successful implementation and operation of energy projects is critical to ensure the world’s increasing energy demands can be met. These infrastructure projects often face challenges due to opposition from various external stakeholders during construction. Conflict between stakeholders has the potential to cause project delays, cost overruns, and damage a company’s public image. It is critical that developers anticipate potential controversy when planning projects; yet limited research exists as a point of reference. We seek to fill this gap by collecting and analyzing data about previous projects to identify stakeholders, types of controversy, and resulting consequences. Here, we aim to model the consequences of controversy stemming from public opposition towards energy construction projects.  We  propose  a  management framework to  determine  the  potential  costs  and  schedule delays  during  a  project’s  timeline.  By anticipating potential controversy, developers will be able to plan for cost and schedule impacts on their projects. They may be able to engage with community members to mitigate opposition, or include additional funds and days in the project schedule to account for inevitable setbacks. Government agencies may also find this useful in introducing strategic requirements in the regulatory process in order to improve community engagement and minimize escalation of controversy. Ultimately, a better understanding of the impacts of controversy will lead to more efficient energy project construction.

Funded by ENGIE

SELECT PREVIOUS PROJECTS 

RAPID/Collaborative Research: Disaster Migration and Civil Infrastructure: The Impacts of Sudden Population Influxes on Water and Sanitation Infrastructure

This project explored the impact of normative and cultural-cognitive perturbations on water and sanitation utilities caused by sudden and large population influxes. Water and wastewater infrastructures are necessary for the continued functioning of urban environments. Large and sudden population influxes must be accommodated by this infrastructure in order to avoid secondary public health disasters for impacted populations. This research assesses the implications for utilities that find themselves serving transient, sometimes large populations (particularly those which arise suddenly). This project identified and explores changes in the organizational structure and processes of utilities in response to the European refugee influx, which triggered an unprecedented flow of refugees to European nations. This situation provided a unique opportunity to capture perishable data on the institutional impacts that sudden, disaster-triggered population increases may have on established water and sanitation utilities.

Funded by NSF Award # 1624409  |  Collaborator: Dr. Jessica Kaminsky

NNA Track 2: Collaborative Research: Water Infrastructure in the Arctic: Vulnerabilities at the Intersection of Social, Natural and Physical Systems

Even when it exists, formal water infrastructure in rural Alaska often fails to provide an adequate level of service to Alaskan households and communities. Operating water infrastructure in the Arctic is particularly difficult due to the unique coupling between the engineered systems and the unusually extreme challenges from social and natural systems. The small and remote nature of communities present unusual logistical, financial, and workforce challenges, while an extreme and changing climate further complicates the technical work needed to operate and maintain the systems. Accordingly, this project integrated knowledge of the water service challenges, data needs, and workforce issues experienced by Arctic communities and develop approaches to address these challenges and needs with appropriate strategies. Broadly, this project reduced uncertainty surrounding the operations of Arctic water infrastructure under conditions of climate change, and in doing so identified new places where research is urgently needed.

Funded by NSF Award # 2022666   |  Collaborator: Dr. Jessica Kaminsky

RAPID/Collaborative Research: Implications of Social Distancing Policies on Water Infrastructure System

This grant explored how drinking water services provided by water utilities have been impacted by the social distancing policies undertaken by much of the nation during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. By design, social distancing policies caused immense change in human behavior, as families’ shelter in place and industrial and commercial sectors pause operations. One of the many consequences of these changes was a significant spatial, temporal, and volumetric change in water use within municipal water distribution systems.  In this research, existing water meter data and new interview data was used to identify changes in water use patterns associated with various social distancing regimes.  These data, coupled with physical, chemical, and microbiological water quality analyses, provided vital new empirical knowledge of water infrastructure performance under social distancing conditions. Interview data from utilities around the nation explored challenges experienced and response taken to mitigate the consequences of social distancing.

Funded by NSF Award #2032434 | Collaborators: Drs. Lynn Katz, Kerry Kinney, Lina Sela, Mary Jo Kirisits, Jessica Kaminsky

Collaborative: Standard: Institutions in Student Organizations Cultivating Cultures of Ethical Engineering

This project investigated the role that different student organizations play in cultivating ethical behavior of engineering students in the U.S. and to identify the precise institutional mechanisms within those organizations that foster ethical behavior. Research shows that students are typically less interested in understanding the ethical implications of their work at the end of their studies than they were at the beginning. This gap between instruction and application indicates a continued need for research to identify factors that are effective in cultivating a culture of ethical STEM and promoting an awareness and understanding of ethics among engineering students.

Funded by NSF Award #1926330  | Collaborators: Drs. Cristina Poleacovschi, Scott Feinstein, Cassie Rutherford, Kate Padgett Walsh

Enabling Solar-Powered Water Purification Technology

Through this project, I developed an analytical framework to shift the paradigm from centralized technologies to decentralized technologies by understanding institutional motivators and barriers and exploring institutional complexity to diffuse innovation.  Technologies exist within an operating context, and simply put, without understanding that operating context, many technologies will not thrive within unique communities they were not designed specifically to exist within. However, an understanding of this operating context and the implications, allows for satisficing engineering technologies that are sustainable in the long-term, providing resilience against chronic events such as climate change.

Funded by the University of Austin at Texas Energy-Institute | Collaborators: Drs. Lynn Katz, Guihua Yu

Big traffic data as an approach for roadway construction planning: quality assessment and aggregation framework

The rapid development of intelligent transportation systems in the past few decades has catalyzed the collection and use of big data. Here, we used data to enable more informed, and data-driven planning for roadway construction operations—an application different from its typical use. the framework demonstration showcased the significance of using high granular traffic data that considers the specifics of individual roadways to better inform construction planning.

Funded by TXDOT  | Collaborator: Nabeel Khawaja

RT DCC-04 Promoting the Use of Advanced Work Packaging (AWP)

This research contributed to efforts of promoting AWP use, aimed to identify potential solutions to overcome AWP implementation barriers, and provided recommendations to enhance AWP and engineering integration. Here, solutions to overcome AWP implementation barriers are presented; potential solutions are mapped directly to barriers. The research findings are synthesized through the AWP Concierge.

Funded by the Construction Industry Institute (CII) | Collaborator: Dr. Carlos Caldas

AWP Execution Planning Guide for Projects

The research is to developed an AWP Execution Planning Guide for Projects. Such a Guide will help speed adoption of AWP by providing common guidance for the industry, reducing proliferation of competing specifications that can hinder adoption or investment by service providers.

Funded by the Construction Industry Institute (CII) | Collaborator: Dr. Bill O’Brien

Recognizing and Retaining Beneficial Changes from the Pandemic on the Workforce

This study investigated the changes in the way workers in the office and field experienced and perceived pandemic-related change, and what changes were perceived as positive and negative. This work sought to  convert lessons learned from these pandemic-induced changes into practical recommendations for capital projects organizations .

Funded by the Construction Industry Institute (CII)