The National Science Foundation awarded the University of New Mexico part of $1 million of $15.9 million in grants from its Civic Innovation Challenge.
Teams are going to help the community, Kelly Speakes-Backman, acting assistant secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, said.
“The teams selected for Stage 2 of the competition have brought forward bold and exciting ideas for the mobility and resilience tracks in this Challenge to help connect local communities to their work, school, healthcare and other public services,” Speakes-Backman said in a release. “The Department of Energy is honored to support these projects that will pilot equitable and accessible mobility solutions to mitigate the impacts of natural disasters and improve the quality of life for our communities.”
All teams in Stage 2 receive $1 million and work on mini-versions of projects for 12 months.
The project called “Low-Cost Efficient Wireless Intelligent Sensors (LEWIS) for Greater Preparedness and Resilience to Post-Wildfire Flooding in Native American Communities” took one year and $1 million to complete and was led by Fernando Moreu, assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, the press release said.
The UNM team will now work with the LEWIS sensor prototype co-developed and co-designed earlier this year with Native American partners at the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo to deploy sensors and allow the pueblo partners to design their own wireless LEWIS network.
UNM's project was a part of Track B, which was also funded by the NSF and the Department of Homeland Security, but focused on the resilience to natural disasters and equipping communities for better preparedness to respond to natural disasters.