Engineering for Natural Hazards (ENH)

The Engineering for Natural Hazards (ENH) program, funded by NSF through the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation, supports fundamental research to understand and mitigate the impact of natural hazards on constructed civil infrastructure.

Covered hazards include earthquakes, windstorms, tsunamis, storm surge, and landslides, while supported infrastructure encompasses building systems, foundations, geostructures, and underground facilities. The program encourages multi-hazard approaches integrating geotechnical, structural, and architectural engineering with fields like materials science, computational modeling, and risk analysis.

Researchers are encouraged to use NSF-supported NHERI experimental facilities and cyberinfrastructure. Multi-disciplinary and international collaborations are welcome. The program does not cover wildfires, explosions, sensor technologies, or transportation infrastructure research.

Engineering for Natural Hazards (ENH) | NSF - U.S. National Science Foundation Engineering for Natural Hazards (ENH) Archived funding opportunity This document has been archived. NSF's implementation of the revised 2 CFR NSF Financial Assistance awards (grants and cooperative agreements) made on or after October 1, 2024, will be subject to the applicable set of award conditions, dated October 1, 2024, available on the NSF website .

These terms and conditions are consistent with the revised guidance specified in the OMB Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance published in the Federal Register on April 22, 2024.

Important information for proposers All proposals must be submitted in accordance with the requirements specified in this funding opportunity and in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) that is in effect for the relevant due date to which the proposal is being submitted. It is the responsibility of the proposer to ensure that the proposal meets these requirements.

Submitting a proposal prior to a specified deadline does not negate this requirement.

Updates to NSF Research Security Policies On July 10, 2025, NSF issued an Important Notice providing updates to the agency's research security policies, including a research security training requirement, Malign Foreign Talent Recruitment Program annual certification requirement, prohibition on Confucius institutes and an updated FFDR reporting and submission timeline.

The Engineering for Natural Hazards (ENH) program supports fundamental research that advances knowledge for understanding and mitigating the impact of natural hazards on constructed civil infrastructure. Natural hazards considered by the ENH program include earthquakes, windstorms (such as tornadoes and hurricanes), tsunamis, storm surge, and landslides.

The constructed civil infrastructure supported by the ENH program includes building systems, such as the soil-foundation-structure-envelope-nonstructural system, as well as the façade and roofing, and other structures, geostructures, and underground facilities, such as tunnels.

While research may focus on a single natural hazard, research that considers civil infrastructure performance over its lifetime in the context of multiple hazards, that is, a multi-hazard approach, is encouraged.

Research may integrate geotechnical, structural, and architectural engineering advances with discoveries in other science and engineering fields, such as earth and atmospheric sciences, materials science, mechanics of materials, dynamic systems and control, systems engineering, decision theory, risk analysis, high performance computational modeling and simulation, and social, behavioral, and economic sciences.

Multi-disciplinary and international collaborations are encouraged. The ENH program encourages research integrated with knowledge dissemination and activities that can lead to broader societal benefit for reducing the impact of natural hazards on civil infrastructure.

Research areas supported by the ENH program include, but are not limited to, the following: · Understanding and modeling the underlying physics of the performance of civil infrastructure subjected to natural hazards; · Advances in design and decision theory for existing and new sustainable civil infrastructure to achieve desired system-level performance under lifetime single natural hazard or multiple hazard loadings; · Advances in geotechnical engineering for design and construction of natural hazard-resistant foundations and geostructures, liquefaction mitigation, soil-foundation-structure interaction, levee and earth dam stability, and landslide, mudflow and debris flow analysis and mitigation, with a focus on field or system performance; · Advances in physics-based computational modeling and simulation, which integrate theory, computation, experimentation, and data and build upon advanced computing techniques and tools to advance natural hazard mitigation research and education for civil infrastructure; and · Advances in biological and bio-inspired processes and systems for the design of new materials, systems, and infrastructure to mitigate the impact of natural hazards on constructed civil infrastructure.

The ENH program supports research that utilizes the NSF-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) cyberinfrastructure and earthquake and wind engineering experimental facilities; the program also supports research that does not require the use of NHERI.

NHERI resources are the following: · Network Coordination Office at Purdue University, which schedules NSF-supported projects for access to the NHERI experimental facilities; · Cyberinfrastructure at the University of Texas at Austin; · Computational Modeling and Simulation Center at the University of California, Berkeley; · Twelve-Fan Wall of Wind at Florida International University; · Large-Scale, Multi-Directional, Hybrid Simulation Testing Capabilities at Lehigh University; · Large Wave Flume and Directional Wave Basin at Oregon State University; · Geotechnical Centrifuges at the University of California, Davis; · Large, High-Performance Outdoor Shake Table at the University of California, San Diego; · Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel, Wind Load and Dynamic Flow Simulators, and Pressure Loading Actuators at the University of Florida; · Large, Mobile Dynamic Shakers for Field Testing at the University of Texas at Austin; and · Post-Disaster, Rapid Response Research (RAPID) Facility at the University of Washington.

All ENH awardees are strongly encouraged to utilize the NSF-supported NHERI cyberinfrastructure resources (http://www. designsafe-ci. org) for archiving and sharing of their research data in the NHERI Data Depot as part of their proposal’s Data Management Plan, using and contributing computational modeling and simulation tools, accessing high performance computing resources, and broadly disseminating research outcomes.

As appropriate to the awards supported under the ENH program, ENH-supported research will contribute to NSF’s role in the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program and the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program.

The ENH program does not support research on: hazard characterization for and hazard mitigation of the impact of explosions, blast loading, wildfires or other types of fire, solar wind and storms, and drought on civil infrastructure; sensor and measurement technologies; long-term structural and field site instrumentation and health monitoring; induced seismicity; and hazard characterization for and hazard mitigation of nuclear power plant, transportation (including bridges), and wind energy infrastructure.

Research on natural hazard characterization is supported through programs in the NSF Directorate for Geosciences.

Additional program resources RSI Cluster Core Programs Overview Awards made through this program Browse projects funded by this program Map of recent awards made through this program Engineering for Civil Infrastructures Cluster (ECI) Directorate for Engineering (ENG) Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (ENG/CMMI)