| NSF Org: |
EEC Div Of Engineering Education and Centers |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 16, 2021 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 16, 2021 |
| Award Number: | 2124189 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Dana L. Denick
ddenick@nsf.gov (703)292-8866 EEC Div Of Engineering Education and Centers ENG Directorate For Engineering |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2021 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $98,980.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $98,980.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1050 STEWART ST. LAS CRUCES NM US 88003 (575)646-1590 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
Las Cruces NM US 88003-8002 |
| Primary Place of Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | ERC-Eng Research Centers |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
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.
Contemporary food supply chains are optimized for high volume, low cost, and global reach?but continue to fail: food deserts and food-borne illness persist; small producers face barriers to participation; and natural disasters (including the COVID-19 pandemic) disrupt production and deliveries. Engineers traditionally approach problems systematically, sequentially, and incrementally. Breakdowns in food systems, however, are less manageable by these methods because food systems have engrained social and cultural elements (tastes, histories, identities, and values) which defy technical optimization and preclude stopping rules. The targeted societal impact of the FRESCH ERC is to improve the nation?s health and prosperity by both avoiding or mitigating disruptions and by exploiting opportunities to expand food variety and profitability. An important aspect of the ERC?s target goals is to shift thinking from linear ?food supply chains? to flexible and resilient ?food networks.? Resilience within food networks means that whatever disruptions do occur will have smaller negative impacts or greater positive ones. Investment in adaptive capacity within the food industry will balance the pervasive drive for ?leaner? food systems, which are often brittle and not aligned with sustainable development goals, such as increasing the incomes of food producers and ensuring decent work for all.
The FRESCH ERC will develop technology to serve all nodes of food systems; reduce food insecurity and waste; expand the criteria for system performance beyond technical efficiency; and transform education and practice in industrial, agricultural, and biosystems engineering to include concepts of resilience. Resilience is more than simple robustness or the ability to rebound?it includes graceful extendibility and sustained adaptability in response to critical situations or trends that cannot be foreseen. The planning grant will provide mechanisms and resources to charter an ERC to address issues of food safety in small-scale food networks and develop a food network challenge simulation to train students and stakeholders about the interconnectedness of food systems. Our intellectual approach to planning is grounded in the Community Capitals Framework. This systems approach considers all relevant human, social, natural, financial, built, cultural, and political capitals, and deploys them holistically to greatest impact for community development. Combining resilience thinking and community capitals is a convergent approach to define priorities and select impactful engineering research and development projects.
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.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Contemporary food supply chains are optimized for high volume, low cost, and global reach—but continue to fail: food deserts and food-borne illness persist; small producers face barriers to participation; and natural disasters (including the COVID pandemic) disrupt production and deliveries. Engineers traditionally approach problems systematically, sequentially, and incrementally. Breakdowns in food systems, however, cannot be solved using these approaches because food systems include social and cultural elements (tastes, histories, identities, and values) which are outside of technical optimization. Resilience within food networks is more than simple robustness or the ability to rebound; resilience includes sustained adaptability in response to critical situations or trends that cannot be foreseen so that when disruptions occur, the negative impacts are smaller and the system remains ready to adapt again. The goal of this project was to provide engineers working on improving resilience in food systems with a wider range of collaborators, closer communication with stakeholders, and training in resilience metrics and methods.
Faculty, extension personnel, and graduate students from 12 universities and three community colleges from all regions of the country, including several land-grant and minority serving institutions, received training in two methods for stakeholder engagement: the Community Capitals Framework and Appreciative Inquiry, and in the state of the art in human systems resilience research through multi-session workshops. A food systems summit was held to engage regional stakeholders in envisioning future food systems and identifying research priorities. Results from the summit were used in a follow-on workshop to develop a food system case study example, to demonstrate application of resilience concepts, to expand collaborations to address research priorities, and to organize dissemination through special conference sessions and educational activities.
A key takeaway from cross-training workshops on resilience engineering was that resilience is a frequently used term that can have multiple meanings and methods for conducting research on measuring and improving resilience that may not actually address the readiness to adapt in the future. While many engineering disciplines acknowledge that there are substantial human factors in success or failure of technologies, research into adaptive capacity has shown that the human factors of communication, commitment, initiative, and reciprocity are critical for success of the system under unforeseeable and beyond-surge-capacity situations. This insight, and tools for evaluation of adaptive capacity, will now be a component of the research and teaching of workshop participants working in engineering disciplines.
From the stakeholder engagement workshops, participants gained perspectives about their own listening and question-asking behaviors, and strategies for effective communication with stakeholders to more quickly achieve cooperation and synergy. All participants gained a deeper understanding of the players in the food system and the capitals that each player brings. That elucidation highlighted the need for new metrics to be developed--metrics that can capture the human and non-human factors of a situation, and be useable by engineers to guide the design and improvement processes. The practice in communication—between engineers and non-engineers, academia and industry/NGO/government organizations, researchers and people in the food system intended to benefit from that research, and universities and community colleges—lowered barriers collaborations, making participants more likely to reach out in the future and more likely to be successful/impactful when they do. Participants expressed intent to learn more about their own food systems: to seek out new stores and farmers markets, to try new foods, to cook more, to give to local food charities, to know what was produced in their region, and to meet more of the people working between harvest and retail.
Last Modified: 12/05/2023
Modified by: Catherine E Brewer
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