By Marc Kodack,

The Department of Defense funds the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP). SERDP is DoD’s environmental science and technology program, planned and executed in partnership with the Department of Energy (DoE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It “invests across a broad spectrum of basic and applied research, as well as advanced development,” and has commissioned a number of climate change and security studies, including on sea level rise (see here, for example). SERDP releases an annual solicitation requesting proposals from interested federal agencies, academia, and industry to address statements of needs (SON) in one or more of SERDP’s five program areas. The Fiscal Year 2021 solicitation is now available.

As noted, SERDP has funded climate change projects in past fiscal years. It intends to continue that research support with a statement of need in the current solicitation, “Research to Improve Installation Infrastructure Resiliency Processes, Systems, and Tools.”

Designers currently assume a 30-100 year life of their constructed infrastructure projects. Designers must incorporate the uncertainties of climatic changes over that time span into their current designs to lower risks to “DoD mission capabilities, readiness, safety, and budget.” Thus, the solicitation asks applicants to present “applied research and advanced technology development…to improve tools that address infrastructure resilience to climate and weather extremes over the lifetime of building and infrastructure system function.” There will be an online seminar on November 12 for interested applicants. Pre-proposals are due January 7, 2020. See the SERDP solicitation web page for due dates, instructions, and additional solicitation information.