Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure: Natural Hazard and Disaster Reconnaissance (RAPID) Facility 2021-2025

The Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a distributed, multi-user national facility to provide the natural hazards engineering research community with access to research infrastructure that includes earthquake and wind engineering experimental facilities, cyberinfrastructure (CI), computational modeling and simulation tools, high-performance computing resources, and research data, as well as education and community outreach activities. Originally funded under program solicitations NSF 14-605 and NSF 15-598, NHERI has operated since 2015 through separate, but coordinated, five-year research infrastructure awards for a Network Coordination Office, CI, Computational Modeling and Simulation Center, and Experimental Facilities, including a natural hazards and post-disaster reconnaissance research facility.

Information about NHERI resources is available at the NHERI web portal (https://www.DesignSafe-ci.org). Awards made for NHERI contribute to NSF's role in the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) and the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP). NHERI Experimental Facilities will provide access to their experimental resources, user services, and data management infrastructure for NSF-supported research and education awards.

This award will renew the Natural Hazard and Disaster Reconnaissance (RAPID) facility of NHERI from September 1, 2021, to September 30, 2025. The University of Washington and its partners (Oregon State University, University of Florida, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) will continue to maintain, operate, and enhance the RAPID facility through this award.

As underscored in the NHERI Science Plan, modeling and simulation lie at the center of the natural hazard community's broader goal to understand, simulate, and predict the performance of built, natural, and social systems during and after natural hazards events. The RAPID facility's principal scientific goal is to inform natural hazards computational simulation models, infrastructure design and performance assessment methods, and social impact analysis by supporting the collection, development, and evaluation of high-quality disaster data sets.

By enabling the prompt collection of high-resolution data sets, advanced reconnaissance instrumentation plays a central role in providing the academic, research, and professional communities with an unprecedented volume of high-quality, open-source, engineering, geophysical, social, and behavioral data. Field data generated by the RAPID facility will be archived in the NHERI DesignSafe web portal.

The RAPID facility's outreach programs include training workshops that provide researchers with the practical knowledge required to take RAPID instrumentation into the field and successfully collect data that advance their research and initiatives to engage undergraduate and graduate students in natural hazards-related research.

The RAPID facility portfolio includes over 100 unique field instruments, including technologies to collect three-dimensional, image-based, advanced survey data to serve multiple disciplines. Among such technologies are terrestrial lidar systems capable of scanning ranges up to 2.4 km for landscape-scale mapping and smaller, highly portable systems for mapping at a local site scale in as little as two minutes.

Other geomatics technologies include various uncrewed aircraft systems with real-time kinematic positioning systems to enable high accuracy surveying, small fixed-wing aircraft with long flight times and the ability to map large regions, and an aerial lidar platform. Additional instruments include portable, vehicle-mounted "street view"-type imaging systems; seismometer and accelerometer arrays; ground investigation equipment, including a wireless multi-channel analysis of surface wave system; an autonomous hydrographic survey vessel for acquiring bathymetry; and water level gauges and flow velocity meters.

The RAPID facility has developed and maintains the reconnaissance mobile software application RApp ("RAPID application"), which integrates the collection of field data such as complex questionnaires, photos, video, audio, and metadata associated with RAPID instrumentation data collection. The RAPID facility also hosts high-performance computing resources to expedite the processing and visualization of field data and provides data processing support to facility users after they return from deployments.

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.