Automated and Robotic Inspection of Flood Control Systems | W81EWF 22 SOI 0032

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81EWF 22 SOI 0032

The Department of Defense, through the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), released a discretionary research and development grant opportunity titled "Automated and Robotic Inspection of Flood Control Systems" (Funding Opportunity Number W81EWF 22 SOI 0032). The program is focused on modernizing how levees and related flood control structures are inspected by moving away from slow, labor-intensive methods and toward automated approaches that use robotic platforms and artificial intelligence. The opportunity was structured as a cooperative agreement, with an expected single award and a listed award ceiling of $2,500,000. The posting was created on June 22, 2022, and the original closing date was August 22, 2022. The CFDA number associated with the opportunity is 12.630, and eligibility is broadly described as "Others," with further clarification referenced in the full announcement.

The problem the agency is trying to solve is rooted in the size and importance of the national levee inventory and the limited information available for many systems. Levees protect communities, industry, and ecosystems, and the National Levee Database already contains more than 24,000 miles of levees, with additional levees still not fully inventoried. Despite their importance, many levee systems have sparse engineering documentation and limited instrumentation, meaning that physical inspection and assessment are often the main inputs used to support condition evaluations and risk assessments. These inspections are expensive and time-consuming, and they can expose personnel to safety risks depending on site conditions.

From a technical perspective, the opportunity emphasizes that the most critical levee failure modes to identify and manage are erosion and overtopping. Slope stability is noted as less commonly the controlling risk driver. A key challenge highlighted is that erosion can be difficult to observe when there is no flood event, but during floods the presence of water can also hide important indicators, making traditional inspection methods less effective right when information is most needed. Beyond spotting obvious defects, inspections also need to collect baseline data required for assessment workflows, such as vegetation type and density, the location of discontinuities, visible damage, and levee geometry. Gathering that information with conventional field methods can demand substantial time and labor.

A second major focus area is the inspection of culverts and other embedded or adjacent structures along levee alignments, which are often locations where early indicators of developing failure modes may be detected. These inspections are also costly and slow, and there is an added complication that the location of culverts within levee systems is not always known or well documented. That uncertainty matters because soil-structure interfaces can become pathways for concentrated leak erosion. The announcement notes that culverts in roughly the 3-inch to 6-foot diameter range are frequently inspected using robotic camera systems, but the resulting video is still typically reviewed by humans, creating a bottleneck in time and cost. The agency is therefore seeking faster, more affordable ways to both collect inspection data and interpret it, especially to detect signs that might point to future failures rather than only obvious current defects.

The anticipated work is framed as implementing automated inspection technologies for levees and flood control structures by combining robotics and AI. The stated goals are to increase inspection accuracy, reduce time and cost, and improve safety by limiting the need for personnel to perform certain data-gathering and interpretation tasks manually. In the first year, the agency expects two primary lines of effort: rapid culvert inspection and rapid data gathering to support levee risk assessment. The notice also leaves room for additional applications in follow-on years if more funding becomes available, implying the initial effort could expand into a broader suite of automated inspection capabilities over time.

Deliverables are clearly tied to reproducibility and transition into government use. The awardee is expected to provide all datasets used in the research and a final report in electronic format. The opportunity also places practical constraints on implementation: any algorithms developed must be able to run on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) computational resources so government personnel can access and use them, and any inspection hardware or software must comply with USACE and Army cybersecurity requirements. This is emphasized particularly for unmanned aerial vehicles if they are part of the proposed solution. Finally, the work is expected to be demonstrated using data provided by the government or collected at government-coordinated sites, signaling that field validation and real-world demonstration are central expectations rather than purely theoretical development.

• The Department of Defense, Engineer Research and Development Center in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Automated and Robotic Inspection of Flood Control Systems" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.630.
• This funding opportunity was created on Jun 22, 2022.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 22, 2022. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $2,500,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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