For the second consecutive year, the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, in collaboration with The Water Institute of the Gulf, is offering two programs focused on fostering applied research and identifying innovations that will enable CPRA to more effectively protect and restore coastal Louisiana.

Coastal Innovation Partnership Program   

The Coastal Innovation Partnership Program will solicit and evaluate cutting-edge technologies and other innovations that could be used by CPRA or other coastal entities to achieve the most efficient, cost effective and sustainable approaches to project implementation, monitoring and adaptive management.                                        

All interested parties, including individuals, teams and organizations, are eligible to submit an application for review. Applications will be evaluated based on a number of criteria, including proven success in improving project or program outcomes and relevance to the 2012 Coastal Master Plan.

Pre-applications are due on January 6, 2014 at 5:00 PM.  Pre-applications will be reviewed by The Water Institute of the Gulf and recommendations will be made to CPRA regarding how to best utilize these innovations within the coastal program.

For more information, please visit www.thewaterinstitute.org/innovation.

CPRA Applied Research Program    

The CPRA Applied Research Program will provide Louisiana-based researchers with funds to conduct engineering and science research and tool development activities that will enable CPRA to more effectively protect and restore coastal resources.

Research topics that are of particular interest under this Request for Proposals include, but are not limited to:

• Understanding and reducing uncertainties in project engineering and design, implementation, and sustainability.
• Reducing uncertainties regarding predictions of future environmental conditions.
• Improving data collection and utility for assessment, predictive models, and decision-support tools.
• Understanding the dynamics of the social, environmental and economic coastal system, and the effects of land loss and implementation of the Master Plan on these systems.
• Understanding social, cultural, and economic resilience and adaptability of coastal communities to natural disaster impacts and long-term land loss.

Institutions or organizations that apply must have an office in Louisiana and the Principal Investigator must be domiciled in Louisiana to be eligible. Academic institutions are the main focus of the program, but private entities, non-governmental organizations, non-profit organizations and governmental agencies are also eligible.

It is anticipated that approximately $250,000 will be available to fund an estimated 2-5 research projects, with 1-2 of these having total budgets less than $25,000. The number of awards and their level of funding depend on the quality and relevance of proposals received.

Submission deadline for proposals is February 7, 2014 at 5:00 PM. 

For more information, please visit www.thewaterinstitute.org/appliedresearch.  

Tulane center: From Mardi Gras to coastal research

Mardi Gras floats eventually will be replaced with coastal science research as plans for a new Tulane University riverfront campus in New Orleans move forward.

The Tulane University Riverfront Campus for Applied Coastal Sciences and Engineering will be located on the east bank, just north of the Crescent City Connection on property Mardi Gras World has rented from the university for years as well as a small piece of property leased from the Port of New Orleans.

The project’s first phase will begin on the downriver side of the property, with later phases moving upriver, said Matthew Chatfield, a research assistant professor at the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research and project coordinator for the new riverfront campus.

“New Orleans is a coastal city and increasingly a coastal city,” Chatfield said.

What exactly the new research center will offer, how large the campus will become and what it will look like — all these will in large part be determined by what architects come up with in the next few months in response to a request for proposals.

Chatfield said the request includes a wish list of what the university would like to see, such as getting platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification for green-building techniques.

However, what programs or services will be included in the first, second or future phases of construction will depend on how the architects develop their plans, he said.

“They’re going to tell us what’s possible,” he said.

The goal is that within 10 years, the entire half-million square feet of property will be part of the campus, ultimately displacing the Mardi Gras World facility but giving it time to find another location, Chatfield said.

“We hope to begin construction in early 2014,” he said.

Calls and emails to Mardi Gras World were not returned.

The new riverfront campus will be on the same spot where the university had planned several years ago to build a science campus called RiverSphere. That center was going to focus on river science, with an emphasis on generating hydroelectric power from the Mississippi River.

A number of private enterprises got interested in the concept, but after further study, it was determined that the location was not a good place for this kind of hydrokinetic energy production, so the plans fell through about two years ago, Chatfield said.

However, a $3 million Economic Development Administration grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce was still on the table and will now pay for construction of the first phase of the new coastal research center in the same location.

“Although the RiverSphere was very different in many respects, there were many similarities,” Chatfield said.

There will still be a degree program offered at the campus, which will also serve as a place of research, although many of those details are still being worked out. Instead of research about the river and its potential to generate energy, the focus will now be on coastal environment and restoration.

Although there are already many research organizations in the state with a focus on coastal restoration, such as the nonprofit Water Institute of the Gulf and LSU’s Coastal Studies Institute, Chatfield said the Tulane campus will seek to complement, not duplicate, current restoration efforts.