DOC/NOAA SBIR NOAA11

NOAA’s National Sea Grant College Program is focused on promoting hazard resilient coastal structures. To accomplish this, communities need access to new technologies that will enable them to forecast, resist and recover from the impacts of coastal disasters (e.g. hurricanes, tsunamis, coastal erosion, etc.) on these structures. NOAA is looking for proposals that will develop new technologies and construction products that can be used to increase resiliency to coastal hazards, including water level changes (sea level rise and Great Lakes fluctuations) during both retrofitting and new construction.

NOAA is interested in receiving proposals for the research and development of Renewable Ocean and Coastal Energy Technology, which will include the following technology areas of focus:

Currently, at many dive sites, NOAA cannot perform “working” dives deeper than 100 feet or using nitrox breathing mixtures due to the OSHA requirement for a multi-lock, multi-person hyperbaric chamber at the dive site. Such chambers are primarily constructed of metal, are heavy, occupy a substantial footprint, and are not easily transported. Although NOAA has two of these chambers containerized in eight by twenty foot ISO shipping containers, because of their size and weight they cannot be used on many of NOAA’s smaller vessels, nor can they be quickly and easily shipped to various locations around the world where NOAA divers operate. The development of a compact, portable, and light-weight hyperbaric chamber designed to accommodate two occupants would provide NOAA, and the wider diving community, a system that would address OSHA requirements and allow NOAA to conduct important research deeper than 100 feet or when using nitrox breathing mixtures.

The purpose of this topic is to develop innovative products and services to support the development of an environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable marine aquaculture industry. There is a need for products and services that will allow the aquaculture industry to operate in a way that is compatible with healthy marine ecosystems and other users of coastal and ocean resources.

The cornerstone for monitoring the take of animals and the trade of wildlife products is the ability to identify samples to species. This task becomes exceedingly difficult when presented only with a portion of an organism (e.g. shark fins, fish fillets). Modern genetic techniques can now readily identify species by comparing genetic sequences of an unknown sample to reference libraries (i.e. Barcode of Life Database). Though the technology to genetically identify samples is now readily available the required equipment is too cumbersome to readily transport and use in the field.

The purpose of this topic is to develop an innovative product to support the population monitoring of specific whale populations and detect movements of large groups/pods of whales.

The purpose of this topic is to develop a chemically-sensitive membrane to enable characterization of large-scale distributions of small marine tetrapods during longdistance migrations.

Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) is an important public health threat and causes significant economic losses in New England and along the entire west coast of the US including Alaska. Paralytic shellfish poisoning is caused by consuming shellfish that have bioaccumulated saxitoxins which are produced by certain microalgae. The field detection kits used to monitor PSP detect only some of many forms of saxitoxins known as congeners. These kits currently fail to detect important saxitoxin congeners that are toxic to humans and marine mammals.

This is the topic description for 8.2 Climate.

NOAA seeks development of calibration methods that will lead to quantifiable improvement of the new version of the U.S. Climate Forecast System (CFSv2) model and thereby enhance its value in the private sector. All such methods developed in response to this Solicitation must be suitable for the ongoing calibration of the CFS forecasts by private sector firms in real-time operations.

Among the findings of the America’s Climate Choices Report on Adaptation is that Climate change is occurring… and poses significant risks for — and in many cases is already affecting — a broad range of human and natural systems. The authors of this report call for a new era of climate change science with fundamental, use-inspired research, which not only improves our understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change but also is useful to decision makers at the local, regional, national, and international levels acting to limit and adapt to climate change.

Societal concerns about the impacts of climate change and variability are growing. Also, uses of climate data and services in the business sector and by the public are expanding. Citizens in public and private sectors require easy access to credible climate science information and climate services to help them make informed decisions affecting their lives and livelihoods. Climate influences almost every sector of society and affects up to 40 percent of the United States $10 trillion annual economy.

A logical place to begin to address the public climate literacy problem is through the national network of local TV meteorologists’ daily weather reports and forecasts. Research shows that the majority of Americans’ largest single daily source of exposure to scientific information of any kind is through local TV weather reports.3 Thus, a goal for this year’s SBIR call should be to innovative new tools and techniques for incorporating timely climate data and climate information services into TV meteorologists’ nightly weather reports.

The objective of this subtopic is to develop an inexpensive, potentially disposable sensor for measuring Black Carbon (BC) aerosols in the atmosphere. The sensor will have sufficient analytical performance to yield useful data when carried on a balloon or dropped as a sonde from an aircraft. The sensor will report position coordinates and BC concentration in a format compatible with radiosonde telemetry.

The assimilation of sea wave heights and related winds into ocean models and verification of the NWS wave forecast model improves their accuracy. To map ocean surface topography and wave heights, satellite and airborne radars are currently used. However, those instruments are expensive and are not suitable for installation on board small platforms such as the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). Recent research has been performed using reflected signals of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS).

Passive Microwave Sensors have existed for several decades, as ground-based, airborne or space-borne. They provide a wealth of information about the atmosphere, the surface, the hydrometeors (rain, ice, etc) and are invaluable for weather prediction. Modern passive microwave space-borne sensors and even planned sensors have only a limited number of channels available, totaling anywhere between 5 and 30 channels. This limited number of channels has been shown to be insufficient to solve for the illposed nature of the inversion of the geophysical state from space-borne measurements.