Research to Continue Investigation of Hydrometeorological Prediction and the Application of Using Quantitative Precipitation Forecast Capabilities to Inform Reservoir Operations | W81EWF 23 SOI 0013

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This grant opportunity, offered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) through the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), supports a major continuation of Forecast-Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO) research. FIRO is a reservoir management approach that uses real-time watershed monitoring plus modern weather and hydrologic forecasts, especially quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPF), to help operators make better decisions about when to hold water and when to release it. The basic idea is to preserve or improve flood protection while also increasing water-supply reliability and supporting environmental objectives, such as downstream ecosystem needs and species recovery. The opportunity is structured as a two-phase application process, with key deadlines in the full announcement, and it is expected to result in a single cooperative agreement award of up to $2.5 million.

The program is rooted in over a decade of USACE involvement in research that connects hydrometeorology to reservoir operations. Earlier FIRO work focused heavily on the U.S. West Coast, where the biggest flood-producing storms are often atmospheric rivers (ARs). Research and data collection efforts such as atmospheric reconnaissance flights (including Air Force Hurricane Hunter and NOAA aircraft missions) have improved understanding of how these storms form and evolve, and those observations have fed into numerical weather prediction systems that, in many cases, measurably improve forecast skill. That matters because FIRO only works safely when forecasts of heavy precipitation and inflow are skillful enough to justify operational changes, like pre-storm drawdowns that create temporary flood storage while still allowing reservoirs to refill if the storm underperforms.

The earlier FIRO phases built the foundation for what this grant is trying to expand. Phase I (about five years) developed and tested the core FIRO viability assessment process at Lake Mendocino in Northern California, showing how to determine whether forecast information is reliable enough to be incorporated into operations without increasing flood risk. Phase II (2019 to 2023) expanded viability assessments to additional pilot locations and advanced a screening-level method to quickly evaluate FIRO suitability across many dams. Phase II work included major activity at Prado Dam (Santa Ana River basin), the Oroville and New Bullards Bar system (Yuba-Feather in California), and Howard Hanson Dam (Washington), and it also produced and tested an initial FIRO Screening Process across the 85 dams in USACE's South Pacific Division.

Phase III, which this funding supports, is described as a five-year effort with several interconnected objectives. A central theme is extending FIRO beyond the western atmospheric river paradigm by directly tackling the problem that different regions flood from different storm types, and those storm types do not all have the same predictability. In much of the West, even a few days of useful AR forecast lead time can be enough because watersheds are often steep and river travel times can be short, allowing reservoir releases to move through vulnerable areas quickly. In other parts of the country, watersheds may be flatter and larger, travel times longer, and the dominant storm types more difficult to predict, including warm-season convection, mesoscale thunderstorm clusters, tropical cyclones that change track or stall, and Nor'easters. Because FIRO depends on reliable lead time and manageable hydrologic response times, Phase III explicitly targets the question of where forecast skill is adequate today, where it needs improvement, and what that implies for FIRO applicability nationwide.

One major work area is research to assess and improve forecast skill for multiple flooding storm types, not just atmospheric rivers. The emphasis is on diagnosing why forecasts miss extreme precipitation for specific storm regimes, identifying storm attributes tied to the biggest forecast errors, and using that understanding to guide improvements in models and tools. The opportunity also highlights the need for basin-scale, practical metrics of hydrometeorological predictability, essentially a common set of simplified measures that can be applied consistently across watersheds to characterize QPF skill and related forecast usefulness. These metrics are intended to directly support screening and prioritization decisions across the USACE dam portfolio.

Another key emphasis is completing and extending reservoir viability assessments. Phase III is expected to carry unfinished Phase II efforts to completion, including final viability work for the New Bullards Bar and Oroville reservoirs (targeted for 2024), a full viability assessment for Howard Hanson Dam (with a preliminary assessment in 2024 and final in 2025), and added assessments for Lake Sonoma (paired conceptually with Lake Mendocino) and Seven Oaks Dam (upstream of Prado). Beyond those, Phase III includes a major system-scale assessment in the Willamette River Basin, where FIRO would have to be evaluated across an interconnected network of 14 reservoirs with coordinated operations and shared watershed dynamics. This is important because operating rules and risk tradeoffs become more complex when multiple reservoirs must be managed as a system rather than as a single facility.

Phase III also deliberately expands to other regions of the country. The plan calls for a full viability assessment of another system of at least eight dams in a region where extreme precipitation is dominated by storm types like hurricanes, tropical storms, long-lived thunderstorm clusters, or Nor'easters (and where atmospheric rivers may still play a role). On top of that, two additional single-dam viability assessments are planned in other non-western regions not overlapping with the system study area. Collectively, these demonstrations are intended to broaden the science and operational understanding needed to judge FIRO feasibility under different hydrologic, meteorological, and institutional constraints.

A major deliverable of Phase III is scaling the FIRO Screening Process to the entire national USACE dam and reservoir portfolio. The result is intended to be an index of FIRO suitability across USACE-managed projects, giving the agency a defensible way to prioritize where to invest next in detailed viability assessments and potential water control manual updates. That nationwide screening effort is also meant to benefit from the new predictability metrics and the improved understanding of storm-type-dependent forecast skill developed under the research tasks.

The opportunity also emphasizes that implementing FIRO is not just a modeling exercise; it is a decision-support and communication challenge. Improved forecasts only help if they are translated into usable operational information for water managers, decision makers, leadership, stakeholders, and the public. For that reason, the announcement calls out the development of more effective ways to convey forecast and risk information, including configurable and customizable portals or dashboards that can be tailored to different audiences and decision contexts.

A notable concept highlighted for future operational flexibility is "FIRO 2.0," which refers to updating water control manuals in a way that allows reservoir operating flexibility (such as the size of a FIRO buffer pool) to expand more rapidly as forecast skill demonstrably improves. This is presented as a practical path for gradually increasing benefits over time while maintaining safety, and it creates an incentive structure that links continued forecasting improvements to tangible operational gains.

From a partnership standpoint, the award is planned as a cooperative agreement, which signals substantial involvement and collaboration with USACE/ERDC rather than a hands-off grant. ERDC brings strong internal capability in meteorology, hydrology, hydraulics, and modeling, but the announcement explicitly states that USACE lacks sufficient expertise in the atmospheric factors that govern successful multi-day prediction of high-impact precipitation. Because of that gap, the agency is seeking a research partner that can work closely with ERDC-CHL on meteorological research, nationwide screening application, and on-the-ground viability assessments across single reservoirs and multi-reservoir systems, integrating advanced observation/modeling with real operational constraints and broader ecological and social priorities.

The expected outputs include completed viability assessments at multiple sites, a nationwide screening-based prioritization index, improved understanding and potentially improved prediction approaches for different extreme-precipitation storm types, decision-support communication tools, and a Phase III final public report that documents methods and findings as a guide for future FIRO assessments in the U.S. and potentially beyond. The funding listing identifies this as a Department of Defense opportunity via ERDC, CFDA 12.630, discretionary, with an anticipated single award up to $2.5 million, originally posted May 17, 2023, with an original closing date of July 17, 2023, and it reiterates that the solicitation uses a two-phase submission process described in the full announcement.

• 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 "Research to Continue Investigation of Hydrometeorological Prediction and the Application of Using Quantitative Precipitation Forecast Capabilities to Inform Reservoir Operations" 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 May 17, 2023.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jul 17, 2023. (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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