COMET Outreach Program Request for Office of Water Prediction (OWP)/National Water Center (NWC) Cooperative Project Proposals

RFP Goal

Since 1989, the COMET Outreach Program has provided financial support to over 80 universities for applied meteorological and hydrological research conducted in collaboration with operational forecast offices. This current initiative, sponsored by the National Weather Service’s (NWS’s) OWP, will fund 2-6 Cooperative Projects, which are broad collaborative research efforts that support activities such as technique development, applications research, and/or transfer from research to operations.

The new NWC facility in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is part of a larger programmatic structure of the NWS/OWP that includes units in Maryland and Minnesota.  It was established to research, develop, and deliver state-of-the-science national hydrologic analyses, forecast information, data, decision-support services, and guidance to inform essential emergency services and water management decisions. In partnership with NWS national, regional, and local offices, the OWP coordinates, integrates, and supports consistent water prediction activities from global to local levels.

The OWP implemented a CONUS-scale instantiation of the WRF-Hydro modeling framework as the first version of a National Water Model (NWM) in August of 2016 and released the third operational update in June 2019. This version of the NWM couples the NWS National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) forcing data from operational numerical weather prediction models, as well as River Forecast Center precipitation data, with the NOAH-MP land-surface model and hydrologic routing to produce water budget variables on the 1-km grid and streamflow estimates on the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) NHDPlusV2 catchment/network flow line scale. The OWP implemented a CONUS-scale instantiation of the WRF-Hydro modeling framework as the first version of a National Water Model (NWM) in August of 2016. This version of WRF-Hydro couples the NWS National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) forcing data from operational numerical weather prediction models with the NOAH-MP land-surface model and diffusive wave hydrologic routing to produce water budget variables on the 1-km grid and streamflow estimates on the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) NHDPlusV2 catchment/network flow line scale.

The purpose of this RFP is to broaden OWP and NWS water resource programmatic activities by encouraging university researchers with hydrologic expertise to partner with current OWP employees and the NWS water resources program in advancing hydrologic information and decision support services. Proposal topics should include (but are not limited to) the following research areas of interest:

  • Post-Wildfire Hydrology - Investigate debris flow inundation and runout mapping rapid capabilities potentially leveraging interagency information (e.g., USGS Debris flow model outputs) that could be utilized by weather forecasts offices and their partners for emergency planning and impact-based decision support for specific fires.
  • NextGen code structure/usability - Using the NextGen modeling framework currently under development, investigate the efficacy for use in supporting development of new hydrologic model formulations. Investigate the ability of researchers to quickly understand how to effectively contribute to open development of the modeling system. Develop documentation and training materials for researchers to understand how to contribute to the open development of the modeling system.
  • Increasing the utility of evaluation statistics for water resources decision support, such as forecast informed reservoir operations, flood warning and watch and other areas. The successful application of evaluation statistics to decision support may be hampered by the applicability and size of the sample, the format in which statistical information is presented to decision makers and the lack of consideration of the costs and benefits associated with actions. Traditional approaches to statistical verification (e.g., a Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient) can be useful in model development, but are rarely useful in decision support. Proposals should address issues of timeliness, uncertainty of the evaluation statistics and how to present them for greatest utility.
  • Verification of flood inundation modeling would benefit from an inventory of high water mark observations in the US. These data could be in the form of surveyed high water marks, insurance damage surveys, or crowd-sourced images of flooded locations. The inventory could guide the verification efforts and obviate searching for and geo-encoding the observations. Methods for accessing and processing various forms of social-media flood reports are needed.
  •  Social, Behavioral and Economic Science: Projects in this category include interdisciplinary work, applied research and social science research that will advance applications for the operational forecast community. Projects may include understanding communication as well as public reception and response to hydrologic events; analysis of how hydrologic information is currently used by stakeholders (e.g., emergency managers, general public, state/local government, etc.) in decision making; methods for improving public understanding of information displays and uncertainty information; gathering end-user requirements to inform future development and application of water prediction information and services; and developing methods for economic valuation study to assess economic impact of forecasts and decision support to the Nation.
  •  Expand remote sensing and citizen science for hydrologic observations, watershed or channel characteristics such as geometry, and other local information to improve run-off processes and flood mapping. Additionally, recent engagements with the academic community suggest that elements of citizen science could also be leveraged to “crowd-source” critical channel geometry data both through direct measurements or image capture and analysis.
  •  Hydro-informatics, visualization and data integration: Projects in this category may include methods for exploring, understanding and managing complex data problems such as the large volume of information within the NWM suite. Techniques to visualize data and represent complex water resources information to aid decision support services, such as the characterization and representation of uncertainty, are desired. Methods to integrate NWM output with geospatial flood extent and depth information are also encouraged.

Eligible Participants

Funding is available to American and Canadian colleges and universities. Researchers at federally funded laboratories, NCAR, and the private sector are not eligible but may participate as non-OWP funded collaborators.

All projects must have one or more primary NWC or other OWP collaborators and are encouraged to have one or more River Forecast Center (RFC) partners who will actively collaborate in the research. If assistance is needed to identify potential collaborators, contact the OWP Program Manager Sam Contorno at samuel.contorno@noaa.gov.

Cooperative Proposal Applications

Two to six, Cooperative Projects with a maximum funding limit of $60,000 will be awarded. Proposals must be collaborative efforts with the OWP that will advance goals in innovative ways.

Proposals must be developed according to the Proposal Submission Guidelines. Electronic copies of final proposals are due at COMET no later than December 18, 2020. Projects will be selected in a competitive review process.

Review Process and Timeline

NWC Cooperative Projects will be awarded on the basis of a competitive review process that rates each proposal using the following categories:

  • Extent to which the project meets the OWP mission and objectives (20 points)
  • Extent to which the project meets Outreach Program objectives of forming collaborative partnerships in applied research (20 points)
  • Technical and scientific merit (25 points)
  • University commitment as indicated by resource contributions (10 points)
  • Commitment of OWP as indicated by staff contributions (10 points)
  • Cost effectiveness (10 points)
  • Education/training and outreach activities that disseminate the project results (5 points)

The review panel will consist of OWP representatives, external experts, and members of the COMET staff. The panel is expected to convene in early 2021.

After discussing the proposals, the review panel will submit its recommendations to the Director of COMET, Outreach Program Administrator, and OWP Program Management who will make the final award decisions by February 2021. Successful proposals will be issued a sub-award, which should be in place by April 2021 unless the university and UCAR have significant disagreements over the sub-award language.



Cooperative Project Reporting Requirements

Awardees will be required to submit a semi-annual report and a final report at the end of the award term. Reports will be posted on the COMET Outreach Program Website.



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