NOAA’s National Weather Service Grant: Cooperative Institute for Water Resources

Across NOAA, water is a common thread that runs through many mission areas, each of which serve stakeholders through a variety of field offices, laboratories, and national service outlets. NOAA services inform essential emergency management and water resources decisions across all timescales, including drought, low-flow risks, and routine and seasonal water management and planning. The development and continued evolution of NOAA’s water resources information capabilities is a critical component of our national infrastructure and essential to our water and economic security.

To continue and accelerate the evolution of NOAA’s water resources information, NOAA’s National Weather Service invites applications for the establishment of the Cooperative Institute to Support Water Resources. The proposed CI will help advance science and services which transform NOAA’s ability to inform routine, high value and event-driven, high impact decisions related to water. More specifically, the Institute will enhance NOAA’s ability to accomplish its mission to provide actionable water resources intelligence to support the issuance of forecast, watch, and warning products and related information for the protection of life and property, as well as the enhancement of the Nation’s economy.

To this end, the Institute will conduct research under the following themes: (1) Expansion and improvement of water resources prediction capabilities; (2) Advancement and acceleration of water resources modeling; (3) Advancement and augmentation of hydroinformatics; and (4) Application of social, economic, and behavioral science to water resources.

The research activities described herein have been carefully defined to complement, rather than duplicate, research at other CIs, except in cases where there are advantages for such overlap. The CI may consist of one or more (e.g., a consortium) academic or non-profit, degree-granting institutions that possess an outstanding research program in one or more areas related to NOAA’s mission. In the case of a consortium applicant, NOAA will issue only one award to the lead academic institution that applied for the award and where the CI will be established and resident. The CI is strongly encouraged to work in conjunction with a range of supporting research affiliates, including, but not limited to other governmental agencies; private industry; non-traditional partners; and NOAA laboratories, and science and data centers; other CIs and Cooperative Science Centers (CSCs); and Sea Grant Colleges.