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Projects/Programs

Displaying 1 - 25 of 57

Analysis and Modeling of Atmospheric Particles to Assess Effects on Climate

Ongoing
Spectral data from satellite and ground-based remote sensing instruments are used to monitor the effects of atmospheric aerosols on climate. Determinations of how aerosols interact with sunlight or infrared radiation from Earth’s surface rely upon an aerosol model that approximates the sizes, shapes

Automotive Lightweighting

Ongoing
The US auto industry spends $600M per year fixing and tweaking forming dies that do not make correct parts. The primary reason that the dies are inaccurate is that the computer models of the dies utilize materials models that are inaccurate. Upon surveying our industrial partners, we determined that

Carbon Removal, Capture, Use, and Sequestration

Ongoing
NIST develops benchmark materials, measurements, data, and models to accelerate innovation in and validate performance of materials and technologies for the capture of carbon from air and sequestration in building materials.

Climate Science

Ongoing
This program encompasses multifaceted efforts to advance the metrology of climate science. Projects include: development of ultra-high accuracy optical standards and technologies to determine greenhouse gases (GHGs) concentrations, atmospheric lifetimes, and aerosol radiative forcing development of

Coastal Inundation: Hazard Characterization and Structural Design

Ongoing
Objective - To develop next-generation methods and tools to better characterize coastal inundation hazards, associated loads, and response of structures, thus enabling performance-based standards for designing structures that resist coastal inundation. What is the new technical idea? Current design

Community Resilience Program

Ongoing
PROGRAM OBJECTIVES: To develop science-based tools for communities, professionals, and researchers to assess resilience and to support informed planning and decision making at the community scale for improving resilience in communities of all sizes. To conduct a multi-faceted outreach effort to

Data Tools for Environmental Metrology

Ongoing
A recent addition to operations in the NIST Biorepository, we seek out places where NIST scientists get bogged down by the complexity of their data. Research at NIST can generated some of the most complex data in the world, at times requiring six months or more of processing to get to the data

Design Methods for Resilient Community Systems

Ongoing
Objective - To advance design and assessment methods for buildings and infrastructure to improve their ability to support the social and economic functions they support and community resilience. What is the technical idea? Quantitative approaches to identify and evaluate the performance of the built

Detecting Change Points in Surface Temperature Records

Ongoing
DESCRIPTION: For the purpose of exposition, consider the record daily minimums averaged by month for a station near Reno Nevada. There is a clear drop in the level between 1920 and 1940 and a positive drift starting at about 1980. There is also however, considerable variability due to seasonal

Development of a First-Generation Community-Resilience Systems Model

Ongoing
Objective - To develop computer-based tools that facilitate exploration of decision alternatives for community resilience and that specifically address key challenges related to the scale and interdependencies of the system and the complexities of the planning process. What is the new technical idea

Development and Implementation of the Community Resilience Planning Guides

Ongoing
Objective - To develop guidance documents ( Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems and supporting Guide Briefs) to improve community resilience and to collect data from communities implementing the guidance documents to inform future versions. What is the new

Disaster and Failure Studies & Disaster Metrology Studies

Ongoing
Objective - To provide leadership, coordination, and management for (1) the conduct of disaster and failure studies, including the development and maintenance of an archival data repository, (2) promoting the implementation of recommendations from disaster and failure studies, (3) carrying out the

Electron-Beam Irradiation of Solar Cells

Ongoing
NIST irradiates solar cells that are manufactured by leading developers of high-efficiency solar photovoltaic cells for space applications. As part of the space-qualification process, the performance of these cells in a space environment must be validated. This validation process includes the

Embedded Intelligence in Buildings Program

Ongoing
Objective: To develop and deploy advances in measurement science that will improve building operations to achieve lower operating costs, energy efficiency, occupant comfort/safety/security, and smart grid integration through the use of intelligent building systems. What is the problem? “The world is

Environmental Metabolomics

Ongoing
The application of metabolomics techniques to environmental systems biology offers a promising opportunity to achieve insights into non-model organism biology. Each biological system manifests distinctive challenges that offer insights into criteria important for rigorous study design and method

Fire Risk Reduction in Communities Program

Ongoing
Objective: To develop and deploy advances in measurement science to improve the resilience of communities and structures to unwanted fires through innovative fire protection and response technologies and tactics. What is the new technical idea? There are two new technical ideas, using measurement

Flammability Metrics for New Low-GWP Refrigerants

Ongoing
Objective: To develop the capability to measure and predict the burning velocity of mixtures of low-Global Warming Potential (GWP) refrigerants to allow the ranking of the mixtures in terms of their flammability, to assist in the selection and implementation of the best replacements for high-GWP

FOREST

Ongoing
The goals of the research are to: Provide a testbed (Forested Optical Reference for Evaluating Sensor Technology, FOREST) for ecophysiological and optical sensors with well-established reference points Investigate ecosystem phenomenology that will allow for better estimates of carbon flux Improve

Gas Concentration Standards Supporting Atmospheric Monitoring

Ongoing
NIST develops suites of SI-traceable, amount-of-substance, primary gas standard mixtures (PSMs) for key trace and greenhouse gas species to provide traceability to the International System of Units for a range of user communities. Standard Reference Materials (SRMs), certified to the PSMs, are

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Transport

Completed
Objective - Create a well-characterized highly accurate reference measurement system at near industrial scale to demonstrate a framework for conducting low-uncertainty measurements of carbon dioxide emissions, and to improve and evaluate atmospheric dispersion models for reducing model uncertainties

High Temperature Performance of Fire Fighter Equipment

Ongoing
OBJECTIVE: To improve the safety and effectiveness of fire fighters by developing science-based standard test methods that characterize the performance of fire fighting equipment and gear under fire environment conditions. TECHNICAL IDEA: This project aims to improve the performance of fire fighter