Clean and safe water is a basic necessity for a community to survive and thrive. However, millions of people are exposed to unsafe levels of drinking water contaminants including toxic and persistent heavy metals and ubiquitous “forever chemicals” such as per– and polyfluroalkyl substances (PFAS). Despite strict regulations, and well-established laboratory methods for detecting these widespread and persistent contaminants, these pollutants sometimes go undetected because of infrequent sampling and testing. In this project engineers, computer scientists, and social scientists from the University of Massachusetts Lowell will work closely with community stakeholders (residents, neighborhood groups, nonprofits, drinking water utilities, and regulators) to pilot a smart Internet of Things (IoT) enabled water-quality monitoring and alert system in several socio-economically diverse communities of Massachusetts. Given that drinking water contamination and exposure occurs disproportionately in economically and racially disadvantaged communities with older infrastructure, the proposed technology will empower underprivileged groups to use the data to advocate for remediation efforts. The transdisciplinary sociotechnical systems approach to implement a smart community engaged water-quality monitoring and alert system will be a new paradigm for addressing similar large scale societal and infrastructural problems.

In this SCC project, the investigators will (1) deploy citizen-scientist-operated electrochemical electronic tongue (E-Tongue) devices for rapid, onsite, water quality testing of contaminants such as lead and arsenic, (2) co-design with community stakeholders a user-friendly app and cloud-computing platform for data analysis, and (3) foster shared learning and collaboration among community stakeholders to build social cohesion and trust in water testing technologies and the local authorities. Furthermore, this work will develop spatiotemporal machine learning algorithms and a cloud-computing platform that will take the responses from the individual E-Tongue devices and produce predictions of contaminant type, concentration, probable source, and extent of the contamination. This information will be used to quickly notify the public health authorities for intervention and alert affected residents to take appropriate actions. Through the design, development, and testing of a smart sensing and cloud-computing system, the proposed transformative research will contribute to the fundamental understanding and practical design of novel spatiotemporal analytics, mobile computing, and machine learning techniques for real-time water contaminant threat detection and early warning systems. The research will also advance our knowledge and understanding of the technologies, training, and relationships required to facilitate a sustainable, scalable sensor platform for water quality testing and increase awareness and social trust in water testing technologies and local authorities.
 

Communities across the world are experiencing a challenging paradox: accelerating development in the context of climate change. Often, the impacts are concentrated in disadvantaged communities, requiring new approaches to pursuing local and equitable solutions to climate resilience. Common SENSES will demonstrate such an approach by integrating cutting-edge science with community priorities in conjunction with a capital redevelopment of Blue Hill Ave. in Boston, MA, a long-neglected thoroughfare running through the heart of the city’s historically Black communities. Networks of sensors installed throughout Blue Hill Ave.’s neighborhoods will measure the threat of environmental hazards, including extreme heat and rainwater flooding, from street to street. These data will be explored collaboratively with community stakeholders in workshops that will culminate in proposals for the placement of green infrastructure (e.g., rain gardens, green roofs) optimized to mitigate hazards in the neighborhood following the redevelopment. The project is a community-city-university partnership between the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) and Project RIGHT, which serve communities along the Blue Hill Ave. corridor; the City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM); and an interdisciplinary team affiliated with Northeastern University’s Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI).

Common SENSES will make four major advances. (1) It will generate new techniques for modeling sensor data to quantify disparities in hazards from block to block within communities, or microspatial inequities. (2) It will develop new practices and tools for participatory modeling, or the process of generating solutions by placing complex data in the hands of community stakeholders. (3) It will evaluate the impacts that green infrastructure can have on mitigating microspatial inequities in communities. (4) It will demonstrate how sensor networks can be best integrated with community needs and perspectives to have true public impact, something that this emergent technology often lacks. The project will have extensive benefits for the Blue Hill Ave. corridor and will demonstrate a model for similar projects locally and globally. The team will work with the City of Boston to replicate the approach in other projects throughout the greater Boston region. This project will also publish the Common SENSES playbook, a non-academic publication summarizing the insights, tools, and practices developed throughout the project to enable other communities to incorporate in their own pursuit of local solutions to climate resilience.

This project seeks to reduce loneliness in older adults who reside in long term care (LTC) communities through new augmented reality (AR) technology. Loneliness is a serious condition that is related to increases in heart disease, depression, suicide, mental and physical decline, and reduced quality of life and death. Two out of five older adults in the U.S. report being lonely. Even more alarming, three out of four LTC older adults experience loneliness. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its accompanying safety protocols, has intensified loneliness across the LTCs. The project will discover how augmented reality can reduce loneliness in LTC older adults by linking them with family members who reside elsewhere. This project will allow older adults and family members to see each other’s 3-dimensional realistic images, eat meals together, and interact with one another in various activities, such as playing cards. Investigators of this project are experts in engineering, computer science, gerontology, nursing, medicine and social health science. Working with older adults and family members in the design and testing of the AR technology, the team will compare AR to 2D interactive communication technologies, such as Zoom or Facetime. Initial understanding of the feasibility and acceptability of this enhanced AR technology among older adults, families and LTC staff will guide future studies targeting loneliness, ultimately improving quality of life for older adults. The community focus for this project will be older adults residing in LTC communities in Middle Tennessee with the potential to scaling the solution across the nation.

The project will fundamentally advance the scientific and the technological methodologies of collaborative Augmented Reality to enhance social presence and thus social connectedness, to create realistic and socially appropriate interactions. It will make several fundamental contributions in both technology and social science during the course of this research: 1) create a novel multi-objective optimization based framework that minimizes positional errors of the hand of the avatar while preserving its nonverbal behavior with respect to the human it represents; such an ability will allow shared activities (e.g., drinking tea together) with appropriate social nonverbal behavior (e.g., gaze and postures), a critical component of communication; 2) create a new methodology of a user’s motions onto its avatar to generate naturalistic, socially appropriate motion that respects dissimilarities between the user’s and its avatar’s environments (e.g., differences in room geometries) through novel motion mapping and optimization that ensures natural walking patterns; 3) develop a greater understanding of the feasibility, acceptability and social presence in the use of varying collaborative AR activities and environments for older adults with different levels of cognitive impairment and their family members; 4) develop a greater understanding of the impact of collaborative AR on loneliness based on level of cognitive impairment; 5) gain a greater understanding of the logistics and deployment of this technology in LTCs and family homes to inform scalability; and 6) create activity design guidelines for reduction of loneliness in older adults. The research will be conducted through participatory design using key stakeholders (e.g., older adults, activity directors, LTC management) and evaluated using a two-arm experimental design comparing collaborative AR to current state-of-the-art 2D interactive communication technologies.

This Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) project will advance methods to improve end-to-end mobility for people with physical disabilities who rely on wheelchairs in their daily activities and encounter several barriers to their movement in the built environment. A typical mobility scenario involves navigation (i.e., finding accessible routes) and maneuvering tasks (i.e., parking wheelchair in confined spaces). These scenarios demand substantial effort and pose safety and anxiety risks for people with physical disabilities adversely affecting their quality of life. This project engages a broad group of stakeholders with converging disability perspectives (e.g., veterans with disabilities), patient care expertise, and experience in public service to create a user-centered autonomy that will enable people with physical disabilities to independently control their travel needs. The project scope will focus on individuals without any significant impairment in upper extremity function and/or sensory and cognitive domains, opening the door for future translational research that will extend research outcomes to other groups with diverse abilities.

This integrative research project addresses critical knowledge gaps and leverages a participatory design process to: 1) Discover determinants for successful end-to-end mobility system performance from the perspective of people with physical disabilities; 2) Integrate new navigation and maneuvering algorithms to support end-to-end personal mobility of people with physical disabilities; 3) Investigate mechanisms to enhance a symbiotic relationship between users and the end-to-end mobility system; and 4) Explore psychological, social, and economic factors conductive to promoting widespread adoption in communities. A cohort of people with physical disabilities embedded within the research team will continually inform the project activities for its entire duration. In addition, two study groups recruited in coordination with the project stakeholders will participate in human factors studies conducted in both laboratory and naturalistic field environments to test and evaluate the implementation of the end-to-end mobility system in the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area of southeast Michigan. The evaluation plan includes assessment of economic and social-psychological factors affecting adoption of the system in the community of people with physical disabilities. The project outcomes have no limitation in terms of population size or travel distances and can be applied in mobility scenarios that include transportation modes such as shuttle bus, rail, on-demand vehicles, or soon, shared driverless vehicles, as well as scale across a broad range of constructed facilities and urban communities. Cities aspiring to become smart, connected, and inclusive urban communities will benefit from the results of this research by informing the integration of mobility needs of people with physical disabilities into their master plans.

Across the nation, behavioral health concerns for youth are on the rise. In this context, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) youth experience behavioral health disparities at some of the highest rates in the United States. Even as behavioral health services are becoming more available through mobile health and telehealth interventions, the lack of ubiquitous, high-speed Internet connectivity in rural tribal communities prevents many AIAN youths from accessing these critical services. It is in this context that we have partnered with the Hopi community to propose the Qöyangnuptu Intervention (QI), a sociotechnical system of care that integrates mobile healthcare (mHealth), relational support systems, and cultural ways of well-being. This project will combine community expertise with the expertise of clinical psychologists, education researchers, and computer scientists to pilot the QI. Importantly, this project will engage Hopi community members as co-researchers who will help shape our research design and pilot as we carry out the project. This project anticipates research outcomes will be helpful to many different communities who experience pernicious health and digital disparities, including other tribal communities, migrant communities, and rural communities.

The QI Pilot will allow us to answer the research questions that drive our social science and technological Research. These questions include: (1) In AIAN communities with unique cultural characteristics, how should a youth-focused sociotechnical behavioral health intervention be designed to encourage sustained engagement and positively impact indicators of mental health?; and (2) How can interactive technical interventions be designed to best support sustained community engagement in a challenged network environment? This project will utilize an interdisciplinary approach to designing, piloting, and evaluating the QI; we integrate research expertise from clinical psychology, special education, human-computer interaction, computer networking, and public health. This project will take a participatory action research approach to ensure that our research is community-driven. This project will produce five key research outcomes: (i) QI App that enables Hopi youth to engage with culturally-tailored interactive experiences to build social and emotional resilience; (ii) a cross-age peer mentorship program facilitated through the QI App; (iii) family resilience workshops that raise awareness and literacy about behavioral at a community level; (iv) a community-curated database of behavioral health resources that help guide Hopi youth and families to relevant and accessible resources; and (v) digital skills workshops focused on training Hopi youth in the technical dimensions of app development.

This Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) project focuses on strengthening the preparedness and resilience of transit communities facing public health disasters through the development of a sociotechnical system for crowd management. Following the substantial drop in public transportation ridership across the globe during the pandemic, how can subway systems respond to and recover from a future pandemic? Mass transit, especially subways, are essential to the economic viability and environmental sustainability of cities. This research will elevate U.S. leadership and economic competitiveness in recovery from pandemics, and will improve the social, economic, and environmental well-being of those who live, work, and travel within cities. The goal of this study is to equip public transit communities (i.e., agencies, workers, and riders) with a sociotechnical system, “Way-CARE" (Subway Crowd Management to Minimize Airborne Transmission of REspiratory Viruses) that: 1) enables transit riders to make informed decisions and adapt travel behavior accordingly; and 2) provides transit agencies engaged in planning and policymaking with recommendations for mitigating virus transmission risks to riders and workers. People in low-income communities are among the most impacted and are in a disadvantaged position due to reduced accessibility to perceived safer travel modes. As such, the broader impacts of this study include helping identify needs, target resources, and develop more effective approaches to better ensure health and wellness, accessibility and inclusivity, and economic vitality for residents of low-income communities. The accompanying educational plan aims to broaden participation in engineering of underrepresented groups via outreach programs, including programs for Harlem public school teachers and K-12 students, as well as annual student data science challenges.

True health risks inside subway systems and future commuting patterns are unknown after the pandemic. The technological propeller of the project is the integration of sensing, crowd and airflow modeling, and public health knowledge on a microscale applied to subway crowd management. Coupled airborne dispersion and epidemiological models will be developed that account for microscale processes (transport of droplets and aerosols) affecting respiratory virus transmission opportunities. The social catalyst of the award is the integration of behavioral science evidence to inform travel choices and policy making. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and two local rider communities (Harlem and Columbia) will be engaged in the development and assessment of the sociotechnical dimensions of the project. To assure project success, a 2-phase evaluation plan is presented to pilot the system and the technologies. Transferability and scalability will be investigated with input from the engaged communities.
 

The Coastal Bend Region (CBR) of Texas is vulnerable to acute and chronic environmental stressors stemming from natural and industrial sources, including flooding and erosion from high tides, storm surge events, and ship traffic, as well as higher levels of air and water pollution due to expansion of nearby industrial operations. Despite the multitude of environmental hazards facing the region, formal monitoring systems are limited and provide an incomplete view of local-level conditions. In addition, networks for communication and decision-making are often localized and/or fragmented. As a result, CBR communities lack the comprehensive data and decision-making structures needed to plan for, respond to, and mitigate the impacts of potential hazards. This project will advance the understanding of how smart and connected technologies can be integrated into and support regional communication networks to build adaptive capacity in the face of cumulative impacts from climate change and industrial expansion, using the CBR as an exemplar. Research activities will be co-developed and coordinated with residents, community-based organizations, elected officials, and city/county staff to strengthen multidisciplinary, cross-sector partnerships, enhance public engagement with science and technology, and broaden participation by underrepresented groups and frontline communities in the scientific process.

This project will apply a mixed-methods approach to assess how sociotechnical networks can be leveraged to increase knowledge and awareness of environmental and industrial hazards and to build community adaptive capacity equitably among diverse residents of the CBR. This project's main objectives are to (1) evaluate the structure and evolution of regional communication, information-sharing, and policy-making networks focused on environmental change and industrial expansion using grounded theory, (2) develop and leverage real-time sensing technologies, machine learning models, and data dissemination tools to monitor, predict, and communicate local-level environmental conditions, and (3) integrate the social and technical components through usability testing, tabletop exercises, and longitudinal questionnaires to assess how the generated data can be effectively interpreted and presented to various stakeholders to increase knowledge of environmental hazards, strengthen regional decision-making processes, and build adaptive capacity. Community workshops and symposia will provide opportunities to refine the study needs and objectives, obtain feedback on the sensor network and data products, share project results, co-develop a vision for long-term sustainability of the project, and discuss opportunities for integration with other regional efforts.

Community resilience is frequently defined as the ability of a community to prepare, respond, and recover from natural and human-caused hazards. Preparedness is a vital aspect of community resilience, but our existing frameworks and emergency guidelines generally focus on response, rather than seeking to understand the connection between events and preparing for subsequent hazards. The majority of disasters involve a chain of events occurring in a cascading manner. The importance of preparedness against cascading hazards has been demonstrated by recent events, such as the Mendocino complex and Campfires in California, where all reports suggest that the lack of an integrated framework connecting decision-makers and residents exacerbated the devastating consequences of the fires. There is an urgent need for evaluating the vulnerability and preparedness of disadvantaged communities with access and functional needs (AFN) against cascading hazards. This Smart & Connected Communities (SCC) planning grant aims to reduce the vulnerability of disadvantaged communities to the impacts of cascading hazards in a changing climate. We seek to develop an effective warning system by integrating environmental-socio-technological monitoring and risk communications to serve disadvantaged communities. The overarching goal is to bridge the gap between the engineering, scientific, and social dimensions that have been striving to reduce the consequences of extreme events but are commonly evaluated in isolation of one another. The project will broaden the participation of local citizens in participatory risk management, as well as advance participatory, multi-scenario, multi-objective decision support that will make data and tradeoffs transparent and accessible.

Cascading hazards place disadvantaged communities at risk for disastrous outcomes, which are projected to worsen with climate variability and change. This project supports a multidisciplinary planning effort toward mitigating the impacts of cascading hazards from social science, climate, engineering, and decision-making perspectives. This project provides a capacity-building opportunity to better assess and quantify how the sequence of drought, wildfires, landslides, and flooding may drive one another and how the consequences of these cascading hazards may scale in both time and space. This project will provide insights into: (1) the science of cascading hazards and their tempo-spatial characteristics and impacts in a changing climate, (2) social and physical vulnerability in disadvantaged communities against the risk of cascading hazards, as opposed to a single hazard, and (3) an efficient strategy to communicate the risks of cascading hazards, which are inherently different in their devastation and scale. The project will also seek to build the capacity for advancing crisis communications by demonstrating how diverse sources of data (of disparate time scales, dimensionalities, and noise levels) can be integrated to improve decision-making and community engagement in remote and disconnected environments. The project involves collaboration with California Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) and will focus on Lake County, CA, a disadvantaged community with dwindling resources and growing multi-hazard threats. While applied to a sequence of drought, wildfires, landslides, and flooding, this framework is directly translatable to any set of cascading hazards and will advance the state-of-knowledge to go beyond hazard evaluation that typically focuses on a single event.

Farmers in the United States (US) Corn Belt produce ~30% of the world’s corn and soybean, which depends on the use of fertilizers containing both nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). However, due to a lack of consistent and reliable information, these farmers tend to over-apply fertilizer. This practice directly affects farmers, as they are paying higher fertilizer costs than necessary, and negatively impacts environmental sustainability. Yet, farmers’ perceptions of nutrient management challenges vary widely as does their willingness to adopt novel nutrient management approaches. Working collaboratively with the Illinois Farm Bureau, the University of Illinois Extension, and engaging farmers directly through the these partnering organizations, the team of academic and community partners aims to build a smart and connected "Nutrient Management Community (NuMC)" to help farmers adopt effective and trusted nutrient management tools to address critical water quality issues stemming from nutrient runoff while reducing farm nutrient application costs. The project is built on the premise of voluntary adoption of nutrient management practices and includes social science questions to assess the reasons and strategies for encouraging adoption of voluntary “best practices.”

Enabling farmers to manage N and P with greater precision is needed to increase farmer profitability and decrease off-farm losses of nutrients, which can compromise water resources. The objective of this research is to develop science-driven recommendations on N and P management that can be tailored to different farmers’ needs, focusing on the heart of the US Corn Belt: Illinois. This work has three objectives: (1) identify major constraints on how Illinois farmers manage N and P management, and determine to what extent these constraints vary among farmers; (2) determine how much N and P are stocked in soils across a diversity of Illinois farm (including through the use of soil sensors and satellite observations), and how this soil nutrient capital contributes to crop growth in order to model field-specific fertilizer needs; and (3) develop smart and connected technology solutions that enable constrained farmers to join a Nutrient Management Community (NuMC). This work will advance understanding of agricultural management by and for farming communities by providing insights on interrelated social science, biogeochemistry, and technology dynamics. The proposed approach will produce a community-based cyberinfrastructure that will address an urgent need: providing Illinois farmers direct access to high-quality and unbiased information on management nutrients.