Federal Grant Award Summary

William Marsh Rice University received a $599,581 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (CFDA 47.041) effective July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031. The award supports research on integrated flood infrastructure performance under realistic storm conditions, with Greater Houston serving as the primary testbed for evaluating how stormwater drainage, detention basins, and river modification projects function as interconnected systems rather than independently designed projects. The primary deliverables include physics-informed machine learning (ML) emulators trained on detailed hydrodynamic flood simulations to assess how large ensembles of storms with varying characteristics interact with spatially distributed infrastructure configurations to produce flood hazards and risks. Research outputs will address how spatial patterns of flood risk emerge from storm variability and whether traditional design storm methods adequately capture these patterns.

The project emphasizes significant education and workforce development components, with deliverables including open-source teaching modules, a Teaching Fellows Program designed to train professionals in evaluating computational flood risk models, and a Vertically Integrated Project engaging undergraduates in research activities. All code, datasets, and teaching materials will be released as open-source resources. These educational outputs support broader NSF Engineering program objectives of fostering workforce development and innovation while addressing the critical national challenge of flood risk management, particularly relevant given recent flooding events in the Houston area that have motivated over $2.5 billion in community adaptation investments.