The second day of the meeting of the Advisory Council of the National Science Foundation's Geoscience Directorate (GEO) gets underway in a few minutes here in Arlington Va. I've got a lot of things to blog about already and today's agenda is packed.
But a quick note on a new program that I am only just learning about - "Creating a More Resilient America" (CaMRA), is a $10 million initiative intended to improve forecasting and prediction of national and man-made hazard events. NSF is developing a formal solicitation for proposals now. [right, debris flow in Sabino Canyon, Catalina Mountains, AZ. Credit, Chris Magirl, USGS]
The sense I'm getting is that GEO and NSF overall, is looking more at science aimed at addressing critical societal issues. Long known for fostering basic scientific research, NSF is making a major investment in Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) with a proposed $338M increase in FY12 ($87M of that would go to GEO).
CaMRA and SEES are two of 4 focus areas, along with Cyberinfrastructure and continued investment in basic research, education and diversity, and scientific infrastructure.
More on these topics in future posts.