Climate and Societal Interactions (CSI) Division — Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) 2023 Funding Opportunity

The Climate Adaptation Partnerships (CAP) Program, formally the Regional Integrated Science and Assessments (RISA) Program, in CPO’s Division of Climate and Societal Interactions (CSI), is an applied research and engagement program that expands society’s regional capacity to adapt to climate impacts in the U.S. The CAP/RISA program supports sustained, collaborative relationships that help communities build lasting and equitable climate resilience. Funded by 5-year cooperative agreements with NOAA, the work is accomplished by teams of research institutions, nonprofit organizations, and state/local/Tribal governments in multi-state regions. CAP/RISA teams engage in a variety of applied and co-developed research and partnerships with communities. A central tenet of the CAP/RISA program is that learning about climate adaptation and resilience is facilitated by and sustained across a wide range of experts, practitioners, and the public. Learning about and doing adaptation happens within social contexts. As such, the CAP/RISA program supports networks of people working together to plan for and adjust to change using science and local knowledge) (learn more about CAP/RISA).

The goal of this Notice of Federal Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is to support collaborative research and community engagement projects that improve climate adaptation planning and action. Collaborative research and community engagement are defined here as the process of developing trusted and sustained partnerships between scientists, decision-makers, and communities that lead to shared understandings of climate adaptation needs and the co-generation of credible and actionable climate knowledge to support community defined plans, including implementable solutions. Outcomes from this work will support and inform the identification of equitable and inclusive infrastructure investments that mitigate flooding and wildfire risks. Projects will work across existing CAP/RISA teams and expansion activity regions to test, scale, and transfer knowledge to build national adaptation capacity. The Principal Investigator of the proposal must be a member of a current CAP/RISA team.

This initiative supports National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) activities within the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). Through BIL, NOAA aims to improve capabilities to better inform decisions to protect life and property, and mitigate flooding and wildfire impacts to the U.S. population and economy. Specifically, outcomes of grants funded through this opportunity will support national adaptive capacity by 1) generating new, locally relevant knowledge and strategies to reduce risks from flooding and wildfire in frontline communities, 2) testing and evaluating the scalability and transferability of existing methods of engagement and/or approaches for integrating social and interdisciplinary knowledge into climate adaptation planning for flooding and wildfire, and 3) piloting new methods of engagement and/or approaches for integrating social and interdisciplinary knowledge into climate adaptation planning for flooding and wildfire.

Through this NOFO, the CAP/RISA program in the CSI division of the Climate Program Office is soliciting applications for three competitions, with approximately $3.6 Million available in FY22/23.

CPO’s grant programs manage a competitive process through a NOFO announcement to make awards supporting high-quality research conducted across the United States and internationally on the most urgent climate science questions. While each program area has its own focus, together they advance understanding of Earth’s climate system through interdisciplinary, integrated scientific research, and leverage the resulting knowledge, data, and systems to enhance society’s ability to plan and respond to climate variability and climate change. Toward this end, CPO also supports partnerships that build end-to-end pipelines of information (e.g., integrated information systems) flowing from scientists to decision-makers.