The request for preliminary proposals is now closed

CICEET invites preliminary proposals to its pilot FY 2009 Place-based Solutions to Land Use and Climate Change Impacts Funding Opportunity. Approximately $500,000 dollars will be available to fund between two and eight projects of one to two years in duration. This Request for Proposals (RFP) is open to any NERRS staff person working in partnership with applicants from the United States academic, private, or public sectors. To be eligible for funding, proposals must name a NERRS staff person as the project’s principal investigator or a co-investigator. Researchers from institutions outside the U.S. may be included as additional investigators, but cannot be principal investigators.

Goals for this RFP
Project Attributes
Intellectual Property

Goals for this RFP
Preliminary proposals must address the dual impacts of land use and climate change on coastal resources and communities, as they relate to specific needs that have been identified as priorities by a NERR (or group of NERRS sites) and surrounding communities. The following are the goals for this pilot RFP:

A. Fund place-based technology development, refinement, or demonstration projects that can be applied to challenges related to the dual forces of climate change and land use change;

B. Emphasize the use of sound, collaborative practices that facilitate the transfer of research into practical application;

C. Identify ways in which NERRS and CICEET can use the competitive research process to advance mutual goals.

Project Attributes
Preliminary Proposals must describe projects that develop, refine, and/or demonstrate technologies to address place-based questions or problems related to the dual pressures of land use and climate change. Successful proposals will have the following Project Attributes:

1. Technical: Develop, demonstrate and/or refine technologies to solve place-based coastal management challenges related to the dual forces of climate change and land use change;

2. Collaborative: Ensure collaboration between scientists, intended users of the science, and other relevant stakeholders;

3. Evaluation and adaptation: Use evaluation tools to make improvements during the project (formative evaluation) and to assess the degree to which the project achieves its anticipated outcomes (summative evaluation);

4. Dissemination: Use appropriate, intended user driven dissemination strategies to ensure that successful technologies, scientific information, and lessons learned are communicated to local stakeholders, other NERRS sites and the broader coastal management community.

For this RFP, "technology" is defined as the systematic use of knowledge or tools to better understand or interact with the environment. Examples include engineering designs, best management practices, ideas, instrumentation, protocols, decision support systems, models, and other information-based tools. CICEET welcomes a range of research projects, from early technology development to the demonstration of existing technology.

To promote technology application, this RFP emphasizes a collaborative research approach, one that encourages researchers, intended users of technology, and relevant stakeholders to collectively define research questions, identify technical and non-technical gaps and barriers, and work side by side in the development of solutions. "Intended users" are defined as those most likely to use the results of the project to better manage natural resources. "Relevant stakeholders" are defined as organizations or individuals that have a direct financial, health, or professional interest in the project’s outcome, and would be instrumental in preventing or facilitating application of the technology.

Intellectual Property
Since the dissemination pathway is often not clear at the outset of a project, CICEET strongly suggests that you take specific steps to protect your technology’s intellectual property at the preliminary proposal stage, if appropriate. By doing this, you will be able to talk freely about your invention and avoid the inadvertent loss of intellectual property rights. Learn more >