CPO, the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), and the National Ocean Services’ (NOS) Office for Coastal Management are partnering to sponsor, plan, and lead a series of workshops in 7-8 regions across the country from March through May 2020, to build on a decade of research in support of water utility managers. The workshops will bring together small and medium-sized water utility managers from municipalities around the United States to improve understanding of the water utilities’ climate and weather needs and expand the use of NOAA resources for decision making, including the Water Resources Dashboard. Project leaders met with regional leaders from CPO’s RISA teams and NCEI Regional Climate Services programs on October 3, 2019 to kick-off this Fiscal Year (FY) 20 project. The project builds upon a decade of work originating from CPO’s Sectoral Applications Research Program (SARP) and NCEI. A summary report and examination of NOAA tools/resources will conclude at the end of FY20. The project team hopes that future work with water utilities will be coordinated by a Community of Practice, started in July 2019 by SARP, designed to reduce overuse of water utility decision makers and foster cross-NOAA dialog. NOS funds under the NOAA Water Initiative (NWI)/Service Delivery and Decision Support team are supporting this project as well as funding from the Water Research Foundation, who is also co-planning the workshops. The project team is announcing this work to better coordinate engagement with water utilities across NOAA as part of the NWI.
For more information, please contact CPO’s Nancy Beller-Simms (nancy.beller-simms@noaa.gov) and NCEI’s Ellen Mecray (ellen.l.mecray@noaa.gov) and Tami Houston (Tamara.Houston@noaa.gov).
