The National Science Foundation is seeking proposals to advance the science of critical infrastructure resiliency. The goals of the Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes (CRISP) FY 2017 solicitation are to: (1) foster an interdisciplinary research community of engineers, computer and computational scientists and social and behavioral scientists, that creates new approaches and engineering solutions for the design and operation of infrastructures as processes and services; (2) enhance the understanding and design of interdependent critical infrastructure systems (ICIs) and processes that provide essential goods and services despite disruptions and failures from any cause, natural, technological, or malicious; (3) create the knowledge for innovation in ICIs so that they safely, securely, and effectively expand the range of goods and services they enable; and (4) improve the effectiveness and efficiency with which they deliver existing goods and services. These goals lead to the following specific objectives for this solicitation:
- To create new knowledge, approaches, and solutions to increase resilience, performance, and readiness in ICIs. The solutions may emerge primarily from advances in cyber (computing, information, computational, sensing and communication), engineering, or societal (behavioral, economic, organizational) elements of ICIs, although proposals must integrate research across all three elements.
- To create theoretical frameworks and multidisciplinary models of ICIs, processes and services, capable of analytical prediction of complex behaviors, in response to system and policy changes.
- To develop frameworks to understand interdependencies created by the interactions between the physical, the cyber (computing, information, computational, sensing and communication), and social, behavioral and economic elements of ICIs. These could include, but are not limited to, software frameworks for modeling and simulation using advanced cyber infrastructures, management, monitoring and real-time control of interdependent ICIs and novel software engineering methodologies.
- To study socioeconomic, political, legal and psychological obstacles to improving ICIs and identifying strategies for overcoming those obstacles.
- To undertake the creation, curation or use of publicly accessible data on infrastructure systems and processes, whether in the context of explanation, prediction or modeling.
The CRISP solicitation seeks to fund projects likely to produce new knowledge that can contribute to making ICI services more effective, efficient, dependable, adaptable, resilient, safe, and secure, taking into account the human systems in which they are embedded. Successful proposals are expected to study multiple infrastructures focusing on them as interdependent systems that deliver services, enabling a new interdisciplinary paradigm in infrastructure research. To meet the interdisciplinary criterion, proposals must broadly integrate across engineering, computer, information and computational science, and the social, behavioral and economic sciences.
Award Information
Anticipated Type of Award: Standard Grant
Estimated Number of Awards: 15 to 20
Two categories of awards are anticipated for this solicitation: Type 1 and Type 2. The number of awards in each category will be dependent on the overall mix of proposals and the degree to which they meet the solicitation goals, Merit Review Criteria and Solicitation Specific Review Criteria. We anticipate up to approximately 10 Type 1 awards and up to approximately 8 Type 2 awards.
Anticipated Funding Amount: $22,900,000
Anticipated funding amount is pending availability of FY 2017 appropriation.
Type 1 Awards: Projects will be of 2 years in duration with a maximum total budget of $500,000.
Type 2 Awards: Projects will be of 3-4 years in duration with a total budget ranging from $1 million to $2.5 million.
Full Proposal Deadline (due by 5 p.m. submitter’s local time):
February 08, 2017