The DOE SC Program in Biological and Environmental Research (BER), Earth and Environmental System Sciences Division (EESSD) hereby announces its interest in applications from the scientific community for Urban Integrated Field Laboratories (Urban IFLs) that will improve the science underpinning our understanding of climate and environmental predictability across complex and variable urban regions. EESSD supports fundamental systems level research aimed at identifying the foundational principles of dynamic physical, biogeochemical, and human processes and interactions and advancing fundamental understanding of the predictability of the climate and broader Earth system. EESSD develops the science, technology, and knowledge base that is necessary to inform actions to enable the resilience of natural-human systems that are exposed to climate trends, variabilities, and extremes.
For the purposes of this FOA, urban regions are densely populated areas, encompassing interdependent environmental, ecological, infrastructure, and human components. Urban regions of interest for this FOA are in climate-sensitive locations, and are highly heterogeneous, i.e. having uneven distribution of physical landforms and vegetation, environmental processes, the built environment and infrastructure, population density, and socioeconomic clustering in the urban landscape, particularly when that heterogeneity relates to impacts on disadvantaged communities. The Urban IFLs will necessarily involve diverse scientific disciplines to develop comprehensive projects including field observations, data assimilation, modeling, and model-data fusion, to inform equitable solutions based on state-of-the-art uncertainty quantification and data analytics. Applications must be multi-institutional and focus on the development of a single IFL. While multiple IFLs may be selected in response to this FOA, considered together, each of the selected IFLs will represent different aspects of understanding urban systems, potentially including diverse demographic characteristics; differing climate-induced pressures on people and infrastructures; and unique geographic settings, e.g., coastal; arid lands; mountains; plains; or Great Lakes.
Research Focus Areas
An Urban IFL must have significant research efforts addressing multiple science themes and is expected to be structured around the three specific Research Focus Areas (RFA) defined below. All three RFAs must be explicitly addressed in an Urban IFL, though it not expected that the proportion of effort in each RFA be equal.
- Research Focus Area 1: Spatial variabilities across the greater urban regions and how the variabilities exert influences on local micro-climates and micro-environments affecting urban communities.
- Research Focus Area 2: Observing and modeling biogeochemical cycling and atmospheric composition in urban systems.
- Research Focus Area 3: Towards quantifying the benefits of equitable solutions that are applied to heterogeneous urban regions in addressing the climate crisis.
Multi-Institutional Teams
Multi-institutional teams are required. Applications for multi-institutional teams must ensure that the lead institution performs an equal or greater portion of the scientific and technical work than any other team member.
Interested applicants should upload the following documents in sequence in one PDF file (File name: Last name_DE-FOA-0002581_2022) no later than 4:00 p.m. on the internal submission deadline:
1. Cover Letter (1 page, pdf):
- Descriptive title of proposed activity
- PI name, departmental affiliations(s) and contact information
- Co-PI's names and departmental affiliation(s)
- Names of other key personnel
- Participating institution(s)
- Number and title of this funding opportunity
2. Project Description (no more than four pages including figures and references, pdf)
- A clear and concise description of the proposed research that makes it clear how the proposed project meets all the defining attributes of the Urban IFL as stated in Section I of the FOA. The description must include a description of the proposed region of the Urban IFL, a high-level description of the objectives and technical approach of the proposed research in each of the research focus areas, and an approach to integrate among them, and a strategy for outreach, engagement, and training.
3. 2-page CV's of Investigators
Formatting Guidelines:
Font/size: No smaller than 11 pt.
Document margins: 1.0” (top, bottom, left and right)
Standard paper size (8 ½” x 11)
Questions concerning the limited submissions process may be submitted to limitedsubs@psu.edu.