WELCOME BACK TO DISASTER DISCOURSE MONTHLY!
Welcome back to Disaster Discourse Monthly. This month, we provide updates on the COVID-19 pandemic; severe storms across the United States (US); the wildfires affecting California; and Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
The COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine distribution…
The US has reported that more than 45.8 million people have been infected with COVID-19; while more than 743,936 Americans have died from the virus. To date, over 78% of people over the age of 12 in the US have been vaccinated either partially or fully. This month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized vaccinations for children between the ages of five to 11. Children ages 5 to 11 have accounted for approximately 9% of reported COVID-19 cases in the US overall, and currently have some of the highest case rates. Some 28 million American children between the ages of 5 to 11 years old are now eligible to receive Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended a booster shot for adults that are considered high risk, although this criteria may vary depending on the resources available in each region. Notably, this booster shot can be a different vaccine than the one received previously.
Severe storms across the US bring strong winds, flooding, and excessive rainfall…
This month, a series of harsh storms have impacted the US. In Northern California, a convergence of storms brought about new challenges for a state still battling with an extreme fire season. Although the rainfall aided in bringing down the threat of fires for the region, the heavy rainfall combined with high wind speeds also brought about new challenges. Many counties issued flash flood warnings, while nearly 100,000 people went without power. Additionally, several landslides were reported that shut down major roadways. On the East Coast, a storm system called nor’easter brought severe weather. New York and New Jersey declared emergencies in preparation for heavy winds and rain. Travel advisories and flash flood warnings were also in place throughout the Northeast. At one point, the storm system left 499,000 homes without power.
California surpasses 8,000 wildfire incidents this year…
So far in 2021, there have been over 8,000 wildfire incidents in the state of California. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), these fires have burned over 2,495,889 acres. Additionally, fires have been responsible for three fatalities and have damaged or destroyed over 3,600 structures. In October, the Alisal fire spread near Refugio Beach State Park in Santa Barbara County, California. The Alisal fire burn area was located 20 miles Northwest of the City of Santa Barbara. The blaze, which began on October 11, covered nearly 17,000 acres and destroyed 12 houses. It also shut down a portion of Highway 101 as well as Amtrak lines in Santa Barbara County, causing delays for travelers. The repairs to Highway 101 are expected to take months and to cost about $5.7 million.
Do Your Part, Be Cyber Smart…
Each year, October is recognized as Cybersecurity Awareness Month in the US. This year, Hagerty re-launched a site dedicated to informing organizations about how to enhance their cybersecurity and preparedness. In addition, Hagerty released a series of blog posts that discuss key issues in cybersecurity that includes discussions like how cyber breaches can impact organizations in terms of finances, operations, and reputation. In addition to the impact on organizations, cyber threats have impacts on an individual and community level. Some attacks are direct, while others, such as attacks on hospitals or schools, are indirect. Attacks that impact individuals have increased, encouraging new ways of thinking about of cybersecurity and cyber preparedness. Hagerty can help organizations can prepare for cyber risks by implementing cyber disruption plans, communication protocols, business continuity strategies, and risk assessments.
Featured Grants:
Combat Readiness – Rapid Development and Translation Research Award (CRRP RDTRA)
The CRRP seeks to enhance medical capabilities and Force readiness at the point of greatest need in order to save the most lives in trauma care scenarios, which may be complicated by combat operations, limited resources, austere conditions, and/or mass casualty events. The intent of the Fiscal Year (FY) 21 CRRP RDTRA is to support research that will accelerate the movement of promising ideas into clinical applications, including healthcare products, technologies, and/or practice guidelines. Research under this award mechanism should represent a rapid advancement or innovative “leap ahead” and have the potential for broadly applicable, cross-cutting advances benefiting military health and medicine as well as the general public. Applicants may leverage existing resources in translational research to address high-impact research ideas or unmet needs to enable the delivery of life-saving care to the Warfighter during prolonged and en route care in austere and combat environments. For this award mechanism, the definition of “leveraging” is as follows: An investigator basing a research project on existing resources in order to amplify potential gains in knowledge or accelerate technical maturity. Research of interest may include knowledge products, “knowledge resulting from research with the potential to improve individual or public health,” and solutions that can accelerate the introduction of military-relevant health products or technologies into clinical and/or operational use. Projects should take into consideration the varied expertise levels of targeted medical providers, available resources, and the possible diverse environmental conditions in combat situations. Proposal/application submissions are encouraged to include characteristics relevant to military use in the pre-hospital, combat operational setting. Submissions that propose solutions to advance civilian trauma care are not precluded, since civilian trauma and trauma care in the military are mutually influential and may be co-occurring in certain situations.
Impact is a key component of this award mechanism. The potential impact of the research, both short-term and long-term, in addressing the FY21 CRRP Focus Areas should be clearly described. High-impact research will, if successful, lead to the rapid development and translation of applicable advances for improving medical readiness, mitigating fatalities, optimally treating life-threatening injuries, and promoting positive long-term outcomes for military health and medicine, as well as the general public. Learn More
- Source: Department of Defense (DOD) Department of the Army (USAMRAA)
- Funding Opportunity Number: W81XWH-21-S-CRRP
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $7,200,000
- Award Ceiling: N/A
- Application Due Date: December 1, 2021
- Eligible Applicants: Unrestricted
Environmental Education Local Grants Program for Region 8
The purpose of the Environmental Education Local Grants Program in Region 8 is to support locally-focused environmental education projects that increase public awareness and knowledge about environmental issues and provide the skills that participants in its funded projects need to make informed decisions and take responsible actions toward the environment. Learn More
- Source: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
- Funding Opportunity Number: EPA-EE-21-08
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $300,000
- Award Ceiling: $100,000
- Application Due Date: December 6, 2021
- Eligible Applicants: Local education agency, college, university, state education or environmental agency, nonprofit organization, additional information on eligibility listed in full announcement.
Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Frontiers
In today’s increasingly networked, distributed, and asynchronous world, cybersecurity and privacy involve hardware, software, networks, data, people, and integration with the physical world. Society’s overwhelming reliance on this complex cyberspace, however, has exposed its fragility and vulnerabilities that defy existing cyber-defense measures; corporations, agencies, national infrastructure and individuals continue to suffer cyber-attacks. Achieving a truly secure cyberspace requires addressing both challenging scientific and engineering problems involving many components of a system, complex interactions among systems/components, and vulnerabilities that stem from human behaviors and choices. Examining the fundamentals of cybersecurity and privacy as a multidisciplinary subject can lead to fundamentally new ways to design, build and operate cyber systems, protect existing infrastructure, and motivate and educate individuals about cybersecurity and privacy.
The Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program welcomes proposals that address cybersecurity and privacy, and draw on expertise in one or more of these areas: computing, communication and information sciences; engineering; economics; education; mathematics; statistics; and social and behavioral sciences. Proposals that advance the field of cybersecurity and privacy within a single discipline or interdisciplinary efforts that span multiple disciplines are both encouraged.
Through this solicitation—under the SaTC umbrella—NSF specifically seeks ambitious and potentially transformative center-scale projects in the area of cybersecurity and privacy that (1) catalyze far-reaching research explorations motivated by deep scientific questions or hard problems and/or by compelling applications and novel technologies that promise significant scientific and/or societal benefits, and (2) stimulate significant research and education outcomes that, through effective knowledge transfer mechanisms, promise scientific, economic and/or other societal benefits. Learn More
- Source: National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Funding Opportunity Number: 21-597
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $15,000,000
- Award Ceiling: $10,000,000
- Award Flood: $5,000,000
- Application Due Date: November 17, 2021
- Category: Cyber
- Eligible Applicants: Non-profit, non-academic organizations associated with education or research activities; institutions of higher education (additional information on eligibility can be found on post).
Decision, Risk, and Management Sciences
The Decision, Risk and Management Sciences (DRMS) program supports scientific research directed at increasing the understanding and effectiveness of decision making by individuals, groups, organizations, and society. Disciplinary and interdisciplinary research, doctoral dissertation research improvement grants (DDRIGs), and conferences are funded in the areas of judgment and decision making; decision analysis and decision aids; risk analysis, perception, and communication; societal and public policy decision making; management science and organizational design. The program also supports projects with severe urgency with regard to availability of, or access to, data, facilities or specialized equipment, including quick-response research on natural or anthropogenic disasters, or other unanticipated events (Rapid Response Research – RAPID). The program also supports proof-of-concept, high-risk, projects that are potentially transformational (Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research – EAGER). For detailed information concerning these two types of grants, please review Chapter II.E of the NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG). Funded research must be grounded in theory and generalizable. Purely algorithmic management science proposals should be submitted to the Operations Engineering (OE) Program rather than to DRMS. Learn More
- Source: NSF
- Funding Opportunity Number: PD-98-1321
- Estimated Total Program Funding: N/A
- Award Ceiling: N/A
- Application Due Date: Annually January
- Category: Preparedness, Risk Management
- Eligible Applicants: Unrestricted
Rural Residency Planning and Development Program
The purpose of this grant program is to improve healthcare in rural areas by supporting the development of new, accredited, and sustainable rural residency programs. This program aims to expand the number of physician training opportunities in rural settings and subsequently increase the number of physicians choosing to practice in rural areas. Learn More
- Source: Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
- Funding Opportunity Number: HRSA-22-094
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $10,500,000
- Award Ceiling: $750,000
- Application Due Date: December 20, 2021
- Eligible Applicants: Domestic public or private non-profit entities, including faith-based and community-based organizations and Tribal organizations. Specifically, rural hospitals, rural community-based ambulatory patient care centers and rural health clinics, health centers operated by a Tribal organization, graduate medical education consortiums, and faith-based and community-based organizations.
Strengthening Healthcare Infection Prevention and Control and Improving Patient Safety in the United States
This funding opportunity provides real-world implementation solutions for CDC’s evidence-based guidance, during both normal operations and during emergencies (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) and recipients of this grant will lead efforts to improve implementation of healthcare infection prevention and control (IPC). Recipients will support organizations uniquely positioned and have the capacity to advance the design, delivery, and effectiveness of IPC training, education, and competency assessment to improve healthcare worker IPC practice and increase health department support of healthcare IPC and outbreak response. Learn More
- Source: HHS, CDC, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID)
- Funding Opportunity Number: CDC-RFA-CK22-2203
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $100,000,000
- Award Ceiling: $0
- Application Due Date: March 15, 2022
- Eligible Applicants: State, county, city, special district, and Tribal governments; for-profit organizations; small businesses; independent school districts; non-profit institutions; private and public institutions of higher education; and public housing authorities.
Rural eConnectivity Program
This funding opportunity provides loans and grants to facilitate broadband deployment in rural areas to facilitate the expansion of broadband services and infrastructure. Specifically, this opportunity targets projects that assist rural communities in recovering economically from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, ensures that all rural residents have equitable access to Rural Development programs, and reduces climate pollution and increases resilience to the impacts of climate change in rural communities. Learn More
- Source: Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Utilities Service (RUS)
- Funding Opportunity Number: RUS-REC-2022
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $1,150,000,000
- Award Ceiling: $35,000,000
- Application Due Date: February 22, 2022
- Eligible Applicants: City, county, special district, and Tribal governments; school districts; for-profit organizations; Tribal organizations; private and public institutions of higher education; small businesses; and non-profit organizations.
Tracking the burden, distribution, and impact of Post COVID-19 conditions in diverse populations for children, adolescents, and adults
The purpose of this funding opportunity is to track and investigate the burden and impact of post-COVID-19 (PCC) conditions in diverse populations through surveillance and long-term follow-up of cohorts with PCC in collaboration with state, academic, or health networks. Learn More
- Source: CDC-RFA-IP22-2203
- Funding Opportunity Number: CDC-RFA-IP22-2203
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $45,000,000
- Award Ceiling: $2,000,000
- Application Due Date: February 18, 2022
- Eligible Applicants: State, city, county, and Tribal governments; non-profit organizations; private and public institutions of higher education; and public housing authorities.
Questions? We welcome your feedback.