FY 2009 Grants

2009 Hawaii Water Resources Research Grants

Deadlines:

Pre-proposals must be submitted electronically to wrrc@hawaii.edu

Full proposals must be submitted electronically to http://www.niwr.net

Overview:

This request for pre-proposals is to initiate UH WRRC's FY2009 participation in the U.S. Geological Survey State Water Resources Research Institutes Program as authorized by the federal Water Resources Research Act of 1984. We invite proposals for research and information transfer projects in any discipline related to water resources. We anticipate approximately $85,000 (as of early September, the amount remains subject to Congressional whim) will be awarded. Full proposals will be peer-reviewed.

Successful proposals must identify matching funds in the amount of two (2) non-federal dollars for each federal dollar requested. Questions about meeting or documenting this match should be directed to the UH WRRC director, James Moncur, at jmoncur@hawaii.edu.

This program typically funds three or four projects each year, for up to 12 months duration (requests for a second year of funding will be considered.)

• A typical research project includes federal funds sufficient to cover salary for a graduate student assistant, a modest budget for project-related supplies and travel. Faculty overload requests are strongly discouraged.
  
  
• Information transfer or education grants will be considered in the range of $5,000 to $10,000.
  
  
• Seed grants will be considered for no more than $5,000. These grants are intended to be pilot projects or incubators for future research ideas or funding. The PI should comment on how these dollars will leverage other funds.

All projects must demonstrate student training as required by federal program guidelines, and must include plans for technology transfer.

Required deliverables for projects funded under this program include:

• a brief annual report in the USGS format (submitted via www.niwr.net)
  
  
• one or more student theses, presentations, and/or posters,
  
  
• a final project deliverable, which may take the form of a published or submitted paper. For seed grants, investigators may also submit as the final deliverable, a follow-on proposal to another funder.

Program Objectives:

This program supports:

• research projects that respond to high priority state research issues in freshwater or coastal environments as outlined below;
  
  
• research projects deemed highly likely to generate significant additional funding in the future from other agencies; and
  
  
• information transfer projects that enhance communication of research results, or serve a broad environmental education or public service function.

WRRC's Technical Advisory Committee has established several priority areas for our research activity under this program. In addition, the 2006 reauthorization of the Water Resources Research Act shifted priorities in the direction of water supply and reliability questions. Hence, water quality-oriented proposals should refer to improving quality as a means of increasing availability and reliability of water supply. These considerations lead to the following priorities for proposals under this program:

• Water supply: satisfying growing water demand, including desalination, reuse, transfer, conservation, demand management; identifying and assessing new water sources
  
  
• Water system infrastructure:modeling of asset replacement; analysis of infrastructure integrity; forensic analysis
  
  
• Water quality:methods to restore water quality, especially leading to increasing usable water supply, including models of the fate and transport of contaminants and methods of treating wastewater
  
  
• Water institutions, law, economics: methods of increasing usable water supply through institutional refinement; water allocation laws and institutions in Hawaii; methods of planning for or pricing water to increase efficiency of use.

Selection:

In selecting proposals, none of the foregoing priorities is necessarily more important than the others. Some weight may be given to balance among disciplines in the overall research program.

Each proposal submitted will be evaluated by multiple referees, within and outside the University.

Questions?