Building capacity for addressing climate change in long term planning and decision making | BOR DO 17 N014

Opportunity Information: Apply for BOR DO 17 N014

The grant opportunity titled "Building capacity for addressing climate change in long term planning and decision making" is a U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) discretionary funding announcement focused on improving how water agencies plan for climate-related risks when the future is highly uncertain. The work centers on Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU), a family of analytical approaches designed for situations where decision makers cannot confidently predict future conditions or assign reliable probabilities to key variables like hydrology, demand, or climate impacts. Rather than relying on a single forecast, DMDU emphasizes exploring a wide range of plausible futures and stress-testing strategies across those futures to identify options that remain effective under many different conditions.

A key feature of the project is Reclamation's partnership with the RAND Corporation to explore DMDU methods specifically for water management and long-term planning. The core technical idea is building and analyzing large ensembles of simulations, meaning many model runs that vary assumptions and inputs to represent diverse climate and water-system conditions. By examining how plans perform across thousands of potential scenarios, the project aims to reveal vulnerabilities, trade-offs, and robust strategies that are less sensitive to surprises. This is intended to move planning away from "predict and plan" toward approaches that prioritize flexibility, resilience, and adaptive pathways.

The effort is also designed to be closely coordinated with Reclamation's Policy Office through the West Wide Climate Risk Assessments (WWCRA). That coordination signals that the work is not just academic; it is meant to align with ongoing Reclamation climate risk work and produce methods and tools that can be used in operational or policy-relevant planning contexts. In practical terms, the expected outcomes include an evaluation of which DMDU approaches are most applicable to water planning challenges and the development of tools based on those approaches that show strong promise for broader adoption by Reclamation and by other agencies or stakeholders facing similar water and climate decision problems.

From an administrative standpoint, this opportunity is a cooperative agreement, which typically means substantial involvement by the federal agency during the period of performance rather than a simple pass-through grant. The funding activity category is listed as Science and Technology and other Research and Development, reflecting the methodological and tool-development nature of the work. The opportunity number is BOR DO 17 N014, and it is associated with CFDA number 15.560. The announcement was created on February 22, 2017, with an original closing date of March 8, 2017. The award ceiling was $250,000, with one expected award, indicating a single, targeted project rather than a broad multi-recipient program.

Eligibility is listed as "Others," with additional clarification referenced in the original posting, which commonly indicates a more limited or specific set of eligible entities than standard categories like state governments or universities. Overall, the opportunity is best understood as a focused investment in advancing and testing decision-support methods that help water managers make sound long-term choices under climate uncertainty, producing practical analytical capabilities that can be integrated into Reclamation planning and potentially scaled to other water agencies.

• The Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Building capacity for addressing climate change in long term planning and decision making" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.560.
• This funding opportunity was created on Feb 22, 2017.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Mar 08, 2017. (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 $250,000.00 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).

Apply for BOR DO 17 N014

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