rural coastal community resilience
$1M Collaborative Research Challenge
Collaborative research Challenge Partners
Sea Grant
Innovations
Virginia
FUNDING ANNOUNCEMENT
SUMMARY
Virginia Sea Grant (VASG) announces the availability of $1M for collaborative research on water adaptation and resilience-enhancing innovations. Leveraging funding from GO Virginia and VASG’s federal funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), we anticipate making approximately five awards.
University teams will provide collaborative R&D support— assessing the impact of adaptation and resilience interventions on coastal properties, product performance validation, product development—to winning businesses of the ongoing GO Virginia-funded Rural Coastal Community Resilience $1.5M Challenge addressing flood management, protection of buildings and property, and water quality management.
Important dates:
- Submit Statement of Interests & Qualifications: March 31, 2022
- Requests for additional information in order to match university capacity with business and water adaptation, resilience and innovation needs: April, 2022
- Submit requested information: late April/early May, 2022
- Project start dates: summer/fall, 2022
For more information:
Contact Sabine Rogers, sarogers@vaseasgrant.org, or Troy Hartley, thartley@vaseagrant.org.
IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS
Informational Webinars
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Contact
Sabine Rogers: sarogers@vaseasgrant.org
Troy Hartley: thartley@vaseagrant.org
LEARN MORE: INFORMATIONAL WEBINARS
Virginia Sea Grant will host two webinars to present the funding opportunity, information about the waterfront property field stations, answer questions, and to solicit information about expanding Virginia’s collaborative R&D capacity in water adaptation and resilience. In addition to the $1M for universities to participate in collaborative R&D, VASG has funding to further scope and design the codification of the field stations into an R&D network and the design of a collaborative R&D hub facility in the coastal region. To further assess university needs and opportunities with this capacity, Clark Nexsen is assisting in the scoping exercise and the webinars. Dates for the webinars are:
March 2, 2022
March 15, 2022
Businesses will design and build or implement their products, services and other innovative approaches to enhance resilience on the publicly-owned, waterfront properties on the PAA. Universities will be conducting their collaborative research with the private sector on these properties.
adaptation and resilience capacity
This call seeks university capacity to partner with the private sector, collaborate on R&D, assess both the impact the innovation had on improving adaptation and resilience of a coastal waterfront property and validate the full extent of the business products’ performance, and potentially work directly with the company on product development. The SIQs should speak to both the university’s interests and experience in collaborative research (e.g., research partnerships with the private, public or non-profit sectors, product development) and the capacity (human resources, facilities, programs and expertise, policies, etc.) to conduct the specific research on flood management, protection of buildings and properties, and water quality maintenance in a coastal rural context. It is anticipated that business winners will be addressing one or more of the following topics:
- RURAL COASTAL FLOOD MANAGEMENT
- PROTECTION OF RURAL COASTAL BUILDINGS AND PROPERTY
- RURAL COASTAL WATER QUALITY MANAGEMENT
While we are interested in hearing from applicants with interests and qualifications in all the areas of the business challenge, we particularly need qualifications that can assess performance of property-scale interventions and the resilience impact on properties and communities (e.g., longer duration of property viability, mitigation of erosion or flood damage, etc.) relative to:
- Beneficial use and applications of dredge materials
- Nutrient removal strategies from rural storm and wastewater
- Nature-based shoreline stabilization
- Building designs for living with more water
Detailed information about these topics can be found on the Statement of Interest & Qualifications Funding Announcement.
FUNDING AND ELIGIBILITY
ELIGIBILITY
All institutions of higher education in the Commonwealth of Virginia are eligible.
FUNDING
The Statements of Interests & Qualifications (SIQ) is the first step in identifying Virginia universities’ interests and capacity to participate in collaborative research with the private sector to improve coastal adaptation and resilience products and services. The SIQ will be used to match capacity with needs and invite additional, more detailed information relative to the particular needs of business challenge grant winners. Sub-awards will be made from Virginia Sea Grant. While the final funding level will be dependent upon the specific business need, VASG anticipates awards of approximately $200,000-$250,000. There is no match requirement.
HOW TO APPLY
Submit Statement of Interests & Qualifications
By March 31, 2022 at 11:59 PM, upload and submit a statement of interests and qualifications as a single PDF, through your eSeaGrant account. There is no limit to the number of Statements an individual or an institution can submit.
- Create an eSeaGrant account at http://vaseagrant.ecsion.com. We strongly encourage you to create an eSeaGrant account several days prior to the deadline in order to trouble-shoot any problems with VASG staff and ensure smooth upload of the Statement of Interests & Qualifications.
- On the eSeaGrant website, select the “Register” tab, and complete the required information – name, affiliation, email address.
- If you do not receive a “welcome” email with login credentials shortly after creating an account, please check your junk mail folder.
Submit Project Narrative
Compiled into a single PDF, limited to 8-pages each, excluding the 2-page CVs or resumés of key personnel. Include hyperlinks to web-sites or other resources, as appropriate. No budgetary information is required at this time.
Detailed narrative format instructions can be found on the Statement of Interest & Qualifications Funding Announcement.
VIRGINIA SEA GRANT PARTNER UNIVERSITIES
