Funder: National Science Foundation
Due Dates: Proposals accepted anytime (no fixed deadline)
Funding Amounts: No specified ceiling; typical NSF awards vary by project scope and duration
Summary: Supports fundamental, interdisciplinary research to enhance the design, operation, resilience, and equity of infrastructure systems serving communities under normal and extreme conditions.
Key Information: Applicants are strongly encouraged to email a one-page summary to program officers for scope guidance before submitting a full proposal.
Description
This program supports fundamental research on the design, optimization, sustainability, and resilience of infrastructure systems that serve the needs of people and communities at all scales. Infrastructure systems are complex, capital-intensive, and vulnerable to disruptions from natural disasters, social crises, and malicious attacks. The program seeks to advance knowledge and innovation in how these systems function under both normal and extreme conditions, including cascading impacts, trade-offs, and adaptation challenges.
Research is encouraged that:
- Integrates physical, organizational, and operational aspects of infrastructure.
- Addresses system performance, monitoring, and user-equity in dynamic and uncertain environments.
- Explores novel system integration, user-inspired design, data analytics, and socio-technical studies.
- Develops and shares large-scale databases of real-world infrastructure and people-infrastructure interactions.
- Contributes to national programs such as the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) and the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP).
Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches are particularly welcome, especially those that open new research frontiers and transform relevant research communities.
Due Dates
- Proposals are accepted at any time; there is no fixed deadline.
Funding Amount
- No explicit maximum or minimum award amount is specified.
- Award size and duration are determined by the scope and needs of the proposed project.
- NSF awards typically cover direct and indirect costs for multi-year research projects.
Eligibility
- Open to a broad range of applicants, including:
- Academic institutions
- Nonprofit organizations
- For-profit organizations
- Government entities
- There are no citizenship or institutional restrictions, but applicants must meet NSF eligibility requirements as outlined in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG).
Application Process
- Proposals must be prepared and submitted in accordance with the NSF PAPPG.
- Applicants are strongly encouraged to email a one-page project summary to the ISP Program Officers before submitting a full proposal, especially for multidisciplinary projects or those overlapping with other federal/state agency support.
- Proposals are submitted electronically via NSF FastLane, Research.gov, or Grants.gov.
- All proposals are subject to NSF’s merit review criteria: intellectual merit and broader impacts.
Additional Information
- The program does not support research focused solely on individual infrastructure components without a systems perspective, or projects whose primary methodological focus is on geotechnical/structural engineering, material sciences, architectural engineering, wireless communication/sensor technology, human factors, or hydrologic/environmental engineering.
- Principal Investigators are encouraged to leverage NSF’s Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) resources.
- All awards are subject to the NSF award conditions.
External Links
Contact Information