The objective of this Statement of Need was research that will enhance the Defense Regional Sea Level (DRSL) Database at Department of Defense (DoD) coastal and tidally influenced sites. The envisioned enhancements would result from the development of innovative approaches to provide relationships between authoritative geodetic datums and mean sea levels, and tidal and non-tidal residual data for sites lacking comprehensive data. As part of addressing this objective, research is also sought that can assist in determining appropriate methods for data acquisition, the identification of minimum standards of data availability, and the qualification of datum and data records with acceptable bounds of uncertainty commensurate with DRSL application.

Research efforts are sought that specifically provide innovative, robust, and technical defensible approaches to the following:

• More efficient or effective data collection methods or model simulations that establish robust estimates of mean sea level for DoD sites worldwide currently lacking such estimates as a result of data sparsity.
• More efficient or effective data collection methods or model simulations that can reference robust estimates of mean sea level for DoD sites worldwide to authoritative geodetic vertical datums currently used at DoD sites, including providing the ability to shift to active geodetic datums in locations covered by the National Geodetic Survey or localized or worldwide geoid models as appropriate and available.
• Spatially extending the applicability of the above research efforts to distances outside the data collection or model simulation centroid, including establishing confidence bounds for the information as a function of distance from the centroid.
• For sites possessing complex coastal geomorphology, such as embayment and estuaries, the development of rigorous approaches for estimating mean high water (MHW) or mean higher high water in a spatially explicit manner; and
• For sites lacking tide gauge information, quantification method development to estimate an extreme water level local index (average annual maximum nontidal residual).

In addressing the specific interests above, preference will be shown to proposals that address potential screening and inventory approaches for examining and characterizing relevant data and datum gaps at DoD and other locations worldwide. Proposals based foundationally on proprietary products are of less interest since the logic used in their development is often opaque and unavailable for peer review. The ultimate intent is that the resulting research and advanced technology development, if successful, would translate into improvements to the DRSL.

Funded projects will appear below as project overviews are posted to the website.