Engineering for Civil Infrastructure
The Engineering for Civil Infrastructure program funds research on various infrastructure types to enhance resilience and sustainability, addressing challenges from natural hazards and climate change.
Funder: National Science Foundation
Due Dates: Proposals accepted anytime (no fixed deadline)
Funding Amounts: No specified ceiling; typical NSF awards range from 1–5 years and vary by project scope
Summary: Supports fundamental research in geotechnical, structural, materials, architectural, and coastal engineering to enhance the resilience and sustainability of civil infrastructure.
Key Information: Applicants are strongly encouraged to email a one-page project summary to program officers for scope guidance before submitting a full proposal.
Description
The Engineering for Civil Infrastructure (ECI) program funds fundamental research aimed at advancing the knowledge and performance of the nation’s physical civil infrastructure. The program supports work in geotechnical, structural, materials, architectural, and coastal engineering, with a focus on research that addresses the resilience and sustainability of infrastructure systems in the face of climate change, natural hazards, and other emerging stressors.
Research areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Buildings and residential construction
- Earth and earth-retaining structures
- Flood protection systems
- Water, waste disposal, and wastewater systems
- Energy infrastructure (excluding nuclear)
- Transportation systems (excluding pavements)
The program encourages both disciplinary and convergent research, especially projects that address the challenges of making civil infrastructure resilient and sustainable over its service life. Broader impacts such as community welfare, equity, and environmentally friendly, circular economy policies are also valued.
Of particular interest are experimental and analytical/computational studies that advance understanding of:
- Coupled multi-physics, multi-scale, and multi-functional behavior of infrastructure materials
- The interaction of civil infrastructure with the natural environment during construction, service, and extreme events (e.g., earthquakes, windstorms, tsunamis, storm surges, landslides, wildland-urban interface fires)
The ECI program also supports research contributing to the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) and the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP). Researchers are encouraged to leverage resources from the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) and consult the NHERI Science Plan for relevant topics.
The program does not support research on:
- Natural resource exploration or recovery
- Blasts and explosions
- Sensor and measurement technology development
- Hazard characterization (supported by NSF Geosciences)
