Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Science Foundation's Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems awarded a RAPID (Rapid Response Research) Project Grant of $169,999 to the University of Hawaii at Manoa on May 1, 2026, under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041). The award supports a one-year research initiative concluding April 30, 2027, investigating multi-phase fecal contamination transport in basalt aquifers following extreme precipitation events in Hawaii. The primary deliverable is a comprehensive mechanistic investigation and integrated predictive framework that combines process-based groundwater flow modeling with artificial intelligence-assisted forecasting capabilities to quantify contamination mobilization, identify distinct temporal transport pathways (dissolved transport, particle-associated transport, and delayed release mechanisms), and enable rapid forecasting of contamination timing and persistence.

The research will be conducted at a groundwater monitoring site in Honolulu, Hawaii, where scientists will collect time-series water samples to track pollutant movement following major storms and validate the developed numerical and surrogate predictive models. The resulting products—including process-based mechanistic understanding, computational simulation frameworks, and AI-integrated predictive tools—are designed to advance groundwater contamination science and support risk assessment and mitigation strategies for vulnerable coastal and rural island groundwater systems, with particular application to Hawaii's reliance on groundwater as a primary drinking water source and to rural regions across the United States utilizing onsite wastewater systems.