Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Fire Impacts, Remediation, and Education (FIRE)

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.

A warmer and drier climate has supplied abundant fuel (e.g., dry brush) for wildfires, drastically increasing fire activity across much of western North America in the past decades. Wildfires burn through forests, shrublands, and grasslands, leaving marked societal and environmental scars. Wildfire impacts are not limited to the burned area or the short term, instead extending beyond the burn region and over the long term, e.g., health-related issues due to wildfire smoke reaching across state and national borders. The targeted societal and environmental impacts of this project range from the safety, well-being, and physical and psychological health of society to the safety and well-being of ecosystems at all scales, from microbial to global. The impacts can be direct and immediate, such as fatalities and injuries, or indirect and long-term, such as the financial burden on public and private entities and the health effect of pollution due to widespread smoke and contamination of groundwater by acidic rain or fire retardants. The proposed vision is to plan and establish an engineering research center (ERC), FIRE (fire, impacts, remediation, education), by a diverse team that will use a convergent approach and strategy to reach objectives of: (i) identifying the complex relation between wildfires and their broad, direct and indirect, short- and long-term impacts on the society and environment; (ii) identifying expertise necessary to study these impacts; (iii) identifying various stakeholders impacted by or impacting wildfires; (iv) establishing a continuous communication channel with these stakeholders; and (v) creating a strategic plan for the formation of a team of experts and stakeholders to ultimately find innovative and cost-effective ways to mitigate the problem, remediate and restore the environment after wildfires, and educate the public to help the mitigation and ensure their safety during and after wildfires.

The grant activities include a kick-off meeting at Boise State, literature review, regular meetings and interviews with identified stakeholders to learn about impacts and other stakeholders, a major five-part workshop, reaching out to and attracting experts to fill gaps in the team's expertise, visiting up to a total of 12 ERCs to learn from successful ERC leaders, a series of physical and weekly cyber team-meetings, preparing initial drafts of an ERC proposal, two rounds of review, and revision of the ERC proposal. As mentioned, a major activity of the project is a five-part workshop held at Boise State where ERC leaders, national and local experts and community leaders, representatives from state and federal agencies, members of the insurance industry, and leading scientists and entrepreneurs will train the team and a larger group of researchers on developing successful proposals for and running sustainable ERCs; communication with and engaging stakeholders and educating the public; enhancing a culture of inclusion and diversity; and the science and various other aspects of wildfires, their impacts, and impact mitigation. The project will also leverage the PIs' past collaboration with diversity institutions and inclusion of an associate director for diversity into the team to enhance the culture of inclusion, diversity, and sustainability within the ERC team throughout the planning grant, subsequent ERC, academic/professional communities, and society. We will work toward improved involvement of and communication with the public and private stakeholders (i.e., parties impacted by or impacting wildfires, including national and state agencies such as the Forest Services and Bureau of Land Management, policymakers, and leaders of communities and industries at high risk of wildfire) and prepare a well-thought proposal for a sustainable ERC that will ultimately help mitigate wildfires' negative impacts. The strategy to make this possible is understanding the complex fire-weather relations and impacts, developing data-driven predictive fire characteristic models, and educating the public to help prevent human-ignited wildfires and ensure public safety during wildfires and avoid harm from short- and long-term impacts. There will also be a focus on team and capacity building necessary to reach the above-mentioned goals via the proposed strategies. To better implement these steps via planning and developing the proposed ERC, the team will learn from prior ERCs across the United States and leverage their experience to design a sustainable ERC better adapted to new ERC requirements.

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.