Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Resilient societies through smart-city technology; Assessing earthquake risk in ultra-high resolution

This award provides support to U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 55-country initiative on global change research through the Belmont Forum. The Belmont Forum is a consortium of research funding organizations focused on support for transdisciplinary approaches to global environmental change challenges and opportunities.

It aims to accelerate delivery of the international research most urgently needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability by aligning and mobilizing international resources. Each partner country provides funding for their researchers within a consortium to alleviate the need for funds to cross international borders. This approach facilitates effective leveraging of national resources to support excellent research on topics of global relevance best tackled through a multinational approach, recognizing that global challenges need global solutions.

This award provides support for the U.S. researchers to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries to address the growing need for assessment and reduction of disaster risk, collaborative co-design of resilience strategies with a breadth of stakeholders, and scientifically and technologically enhanced responses to disasters.

This project seeks to help create more earthquake resilient societies through smart-city technology. The project will focus on case studies from the United States, Taiwan, Japan and New Zealand to create a framework that combines frontier science with high-density ground and building measurements to provide innovative and visualized earthquake hazard and risk assessments.

The project will integrate current and future technologies to make smart cities and their citizens more resilient by helping disaster workers and managers use their resources more efficiently through high-level, detailed information. This project develops and integrates new scientific advancements to directly provide benefits to society and support all involved stakeholders in increasing resilience.

The framework will consist of a network of massively distributed sensors for earthquake and structural measurements to quantify seismic risk at an ultra-dense level. The state-of-the-art hazard and risk assessments will help provide critical information to strengthen risk governance and disaster reduction measures for stronger resilience. The project will produce impact visualizations such as sophisticated earthquake hazard scenario simulations to better communicate risk information to targeted end-users.

The results and scenarios will guide enhanced disaster preparedness for effective response and matches the goal to build-back-better in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.

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.