Advancing coastal flood protection through public-private partnerships, innovative insurance products, and improved sediment management.

The purpose of this document is to advise the public that NOAA/NOS/National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS)/Competitive Research Program (CRP) [formerly Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research (CSCOR)/Coastal Ocean Program (COP)], is soliciting proposals for projects that will support state-of-the-art information and products to advance the use of natural infrastructure for coastal flood protection through one or more of the following focal areas: public-private partnerships, innovative insurance products, or improved sediment management. This short-term investment supports research teams that include regional users to ensure practical, efficient, and cost-effective cross-sector implementation that advances long-term flood and storm preparedness capacity that is led by states and localities. Funding is contingent upon the availability of Federal appropriations. If funds are available for this program, one to six projects are expected to be supported for up to four years in duration, with an approximate annual budget for each project up to $500,000, not to exceed $2,000,000 per project. --- Electronic Access: Proposals should be submitted through Grants.gov. Sign up to receive any potential amendments to this Announcement via Grants.gov.

Eligible applicants for Federal financial assistance in this competition are U.S. institutions of higher education, non-profits, state and local governments, tribal government entities, U.S. Territories, U.S. Affiliated Pacific Islands institutions, and for-profit organizations. Federal applicants (including NOAA) are eligible provided legal authority exists for the Federal applicant to receive funds from another agency.

Proposals are evaluated by competitive peer review taking into consideration primarily scientific merit and applicability to CRP's research goals. Principal investigators' qualifications and cost are also considered, with cost subject to negotiation.

This program has no statutory formula. Matching requirements are not applicable to this assistance listing. MOE requirements are not applicable to this assistance listing.

Fiscal Year2016: CSCOR continued to take the lead in providing predictive tools to support ecosystem management in coastal regions such as the Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, Gulf of Maine, and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as obtain new knowledge on the prevention, control and mitigation of harmful algal blooms.Fiscal Year2017: CSCOR plans to continue to support it's harmful algal bloom (HAB) and hypoxia research by integrating ocean observing system data with modeling capabilities in order to provide research managers with seasonal HAB and hypoxia forecasts in numerous regions in the US including the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Maine, Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound and coastal California as well as it's regional ecosystem research to identify threats to the health of ecosystems in the Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and shallow and deep water coral environments in the Pacific and Caribbean. New sea level rise research will focus on San Francisco Bay, Hawaii and costal North Carolina. Fiscal Year2018: CSCOR expects to initiated new research projects in its harmful algal bloom and hypoxia research programs, as well as continue existing projects in its ecosystem stressors...