NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing Systems Funding Opportunities to Advance the Blue Economy

NOAA’s Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®) is a national-regional partnership with a mission to “produce, integrate, and communicate high quality ocean, coastal and Great Lakes information that meets the safety, economic, and stewardship needs of the Nation.” Integrated ocean information is available in near real time, as well as retrospectively. Easier and better access to this information is improving our ability to understand and predict coastal and ocean phemonena - such as storms, wave heights, biodiversity shifts, harmful algal blooms, and sea level change. Such knowledge is needed for applications in everything from local economic development, to conservation investment and offshore industry.

IOOS has a number of funding opportunities that support these priorities, including:

• The US IOOS Coastal and Ocean Modeling Testbed (COMT) serves as a conduit between the federal operational and research communities and allows sharing of numerical models, observations and software tools. These tools are needed to elucidate, prioritize, and resolve federal operational coastal ocean issues associated with a range of existing and emerging coastal oceanic, hydrologic, and ecological models.
• The IOOS Ocean Technology Transition (OTT) program sponsors the transition of emerging marine observing technologies, for which there is an existing operational requirement and a demonstrated commitment to integration and use by the ocean observing community, to operational mode.
• NOAA’s Ocean-Based Climate Resilience Accelerators (OCRA) program aims to develop and provide business accelerator services to start-ups and small businesses. The program will foster public-private partnerships to develop sustainable business models for ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes observation technologies, products, and services around four marine-based climate themes: (1) Ocean Renewable Energy; (2) Coastal and Ocean Carbon Sequestration Monitoring and Accounting; (3) Hazard Mitigation and Coastal Resilience; and (4) Ecosystems Services.
• NOAA, on behalf of the National Oceanographic Partnership Program and partner agencies, sponsors the US Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) to advance coordinated research, technology innovation, observation collection, and open data sharing to understand status and trends of life in our ocean, coasts and Great Lakes. Because the blue economy is largely driven by the diversity of living organisms and their interactions, the activities and the growing US and global MBON community are foundational to national strategies for ocean biodiversity and a sustainable ocean economy.