NOAA offering of up to $15,000,000 to improve Disaster and Management Services Worldwide (US)

Deadline: 7-Jun-21

NOAA’s National Weather Service, Office of the Director of the Office of International Affairs is soliciting proposals for Capacity Development for Weather, Water, and Climate Forecasting and Disaster Risk Reduction (CDDRR).

The CDDRR program’s goal is to improve the performance of all operational meteorological hydrological, and disaster/emergency management services worldwide. Improving agencies’ performance for enhanced decision support services is done through collaboration between operational hydrologists/meteorologists, scientists, and other staff with expertise across a wide range of environmental, economic, and social and behavioral sciences.

Program Objectives

The objectives of the CDDRR for Weather Ready Nations, Global Flash Flood Guidance Programs and Hydrometeorological Hazards Early Warning Systems Program (IPS) are to support capacity building in developing and least developed countries to reduce the socioeconomic impacts of hydrometeorological-related risks and disasters and to ensure sustainable development.
Early warning information that is timely, accurate, accessible and understandable is crucial in enabling at-risk communities to take effective, timely and preemptive action to reduce risks and avoid human causalities and losses.
The WRNs program addresses the need to:
- Produce reliable and specific impact-based forecasts and warnings that integrate human, economic, cultural, risk and uncertainty criteria for weather-related events that impact safety, health, the economy, and environment;
- Understand socioeconomic impacts of how and what is forecasted and warned to target those at risk and communicate information in ways people fully understand and respond to; and,
- Engage with sectors whose safety, health, productivity, or security is at-risk; transportation and public health officials, water resource managers, natural resource managers and other stakeholders.
- A country specific WRNs project follows a programmatic approach developed during the successful implementation of past and current projects. Areas that are addressed in a typical project include:
- Development of common protocols among agencies of risk assessment methodologies, tools, and capabilities;
- Development of country risk and response matrices for all stakeholders, taking particular advantage of historical local knowledge of past extreme weather events;
- Country trainings and workshops with the purpose of educating users of weather forecasts on how to use impact forecast information (e.g. NMHS, NDMAs, public, media and other stakeholders); and,
- Engaging stakeholders on local to national levels whose role is to act as ‘change agents’ in relevant communities to help serve the public by strengthening their resilience against extreme weather events.

Priorities

Priorities are:
- Expand the number of WRNs projects based on needs of countries to improve their early warning system functionality and capabilities with an emphasis on impact based forecast and warnings.
- Enhance WRNs applications to better include at risk and vulnerable communities through risk identification and education, and to enhance landslide and urban flooding components of the program.
- Enhance WRNs to improve decision making and better understanding and anticipating the likely human and socio-economic impacts associated with severe weather and communicate those impacts to stakeholders in an effective manner, delivering accurate and easily understandable information, data services and products that can be skillfully integrated into the decision-making process.
For the GFFG program:
- Systems Sustainability and Enhancing Forecaster Use: address critical GFFG program (including the FFGS) sustainability issues as identified through analysis of the needs and requirements of the current program, including maintaining global and local data communications
- Enhancing Flash Flood Guidance System Capabilities and Utility: continued upgrades to the Flash Flood Guidance System, its software, operating system efficiency, and products; further applications beyond standard flash flood applications to include landslide threat assessment capabilities, flash flood occurrence in urban areas, and riverine forecasting or routing.
- Training and Capacity Building – increasing and strengthening training programs for forecasters and users through online, in-person and remote training approaches. -Enhancing Effectiveness for Disaster Prevention – Strengthen links to disaster management relevant to flash floods through training and decision support tools.
For the HEWS program:
- - Develop structured approaches to supporting the implementation of end-to-end, people centered, Hazard Early Warning Systems (HEWS) at national levels for multiple hydrometeorological hazards. The approach must consider a range of needs, requirements, resource and technical capacities.
  - Evaluate the programmatic approaches for design and implementation of hydrometeorological Multi-hazard Early Warning Systems including the technical feasibility.

Funding Information

Estimated Total Program Funding: $15,000,000
Award Ceiling: $15,000,000
Award Floor: $15,000,000
NOAA anticipates up to $3,000,000.00 per year will be made available annually for this award.
This program announcement is for projects to be conducted for a five-year period.

Eligibility Criteria