NOAA's Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH) Implements a Strategy and Initiates Practices to Enhance Research Transition into Operations

NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH), led by the University of Alabama, is a consortium of 14 academic institutions with 14 academic, private sector, and government partners. Established by NOAA in 2022, CIROH partners with NOAA’s Office of Water Prediction to provide use-inspired research, transdisciplinary education and training, and community engagement across the nation. CIROH’s research boosts NOAA’s operational water prediction capabilities, and enhances the application of hydrologic forecasting with government, commercial, and community partners. By coordinating across multiple communities of practices, CIROH co-creates research projects responsive to user needs in operations, planning, and engineering. CIROH offers a diverse set of education and outreach programs designed to generate research ideas and provide initial proof of concept for a wide range of operational hydrologic forecasting needs. CIROH further nurtures innovation and provides developmental environments and enabling technologies to speed the translation of research into operational applications. Equipped with tools, training, and partnerships with practitioners, CIROH researchers implement projects following an agile approach facilitated by regular practitioner engagement to ensure incremental research advances achieve benefits in operations. Unique “research + operations” staff and interactions with CIROH help support the “first mile” and “last mile” of research, connecting projects with operations from inception and establishing a pathway to transition research into operational applications. This presentation will describe the first year of CIROH’s programs and procedures, spotlighting CIROH’s approach to research + operations and early successes to enhance technology transfer.