LRBAA Today Adaptive Risk Management Technologies
All right. It is 2:00 and so we are going to get started. Thanks again for everybody who is joined. I am happy to welcome you as my name is Dusty Lang.
I am my office overseas, the LRBAA, and I'm happy to be bringing to you the 4th season of LRBAA today and today's episode is on adaptive risk management technologies. Before we go into that topic specifically, I want to give a broad overview of the LRBAA. So the LRBAA is a broad agency announcement for those that are familiar with BA AS if you're not familiar with the A A's then I guess I would kind of describe it high level as this is the mechanism that allows the government to go out to non government entities and seek solutions, seek, seek ideas from you on how we could better pursue our challenges. Unlike most BA as that you'll see the LRBA has broad topics, they're high level, they don't specify a specific challenge for which we're looking for a solution.
They specify a topic area that we're seeking ideas for, for our challenges. The other thing that's very broad about the LRBAA is the eligibility. So fantastically it is open to large business, small business, domestic, international, academia, FFRDCS. It is very broadly open. So we're really open to ideas from everywhere and are hoping to seek those ideas and and innovation and new new perspectives because we are not defining the specific challenges under the LRPA because we're using these broader you know topic areas.
We have specifically set up as a process that allows for a low lift for the initial submission to the LRBAA and that low lift is on both the government and on the industry or academia side. So step, there's three steps to the LRBAA submission process. The first step is a white paper and quad chart. This is called industry engagement and we're just looking for you to be able to introduce your idea or your your solution or your your technology development or approach and then we will take that and let you know if we are interested by letting know if you're recommended or not to proceed to the next step. So that is the way you find out if we have interest in in your idea.
If you're recommended to go to Step 2, then you'll have an opportunity to do a virtual pitch. So you'll have 20 minutes and you'll be able to present 12 slides to to the government stakeholders about their technology approach. They'll have 10 minutes to confer and talk about, you know, what they may have in terms of questions on the approach or what you're trying to achieve, and then come back and have 15 minutes to ask you questions. They will not be able to provide you guidance because we're seeking your ideas.
We're looking for what do you have to offer to us. So they're they're not providing any guidance or or telling you what to do or not to do. But if they ask you a question, I always highly recommend you pay attention to the questions they're asking. If they're saying, hey, how would you approach this or how would you approach that. It's something to consider and it's something that from their perspective they're they're looking at as a key element or something that needs to be addressed from the virtual pitch.
If you're recommended the next step is when we will hit the written proposal. So this is when we're looking to be able to do the if, if we recommend at this point we're going forward to try to pursue a contract or an award. So this written proposal will have to include all the elements that would typically be included in in a proposal submission such as the technical approach, the cost proposal and all those pieces. Now I talking about the proposal here, but we will talk about some of the challenges that you'll you'll have to consider as you're submitting and and looking at funding. As we go through the the episode today, I think it's also important for me to I kind of talked about what we're doing under VAA. We're looking for solutions from industry where we're looking for your ideas on how to to do research and development that can get us further towards the ability to address our key capability challenges or mission needs.
What we cannot do under LRBAA is things like support services. So theoretically that that is often thought of as on site support services but it can also include off site support services. So if you have the capability of doing testing at your facility and we wouldn't be able to to take an LRBAA submission for hey I can provide you testing, you just let me know what you need tested and we'll do the testing. Here's our capabilities.
This is not that. It's also not for research consortia, partners, centers of excellence, those types of efforts. We're looking for somebody that's coming forward an entity individually that wants their idea to be pursued. There's obviously you can subcontract if you need to for specific skills or or you know other types of of elements, but that's a different structure than a partnership or research consortium. You can't do mature products where science and technology and BA as are used for research and development or test and evaluation. So it has to be something in that area.
It also the other thing that it mentions in the solicitation and all of these can be found in in our announcement is developing specific systems and I always like to make sure I I clarify this one. Well, when we're going out with the VAA, we're not saying we want to develop a specific system, we're not saying this is the system to be developed. However, when you're submitting a A your proposals or your industry engagement, it's important for you to understand you do have to be specifying what exactly your idea is and what your approach is and how you plan to get there and what the end result will be. Obviously that you know as with any contract we'll be working with you in terms of you know discussions along the way. But you should be coming knowing what that, what that path looks like and be able to execute with minimal pieces of information in terms or or input from from the government just needing those things, those pieces of guidance from us.
All right. So not in that one on on the negative. So let's go forward with the positives. I am really, really happy to be joined today by David Alexander.
He is the Senior Science advisor for Resilience and that certainly sounds like and is an important role. David, do you want to tell the folks that have joined us today more about what it is you do at S&T or Science and technology, I should say. Yeah. Thank you, Dusty and appreciate the opportunity to participate in this webinar. Definitely interested in driving the conversation around adaptive risk management, the, the title for the, the webinar and the and the LRBA topic. You know, that being said, you know you mentioned my title as the Senior Science Advisor for Resilience.
You know, maybe I'll start with you know, just giving a little bit of background on who I am and and how long I've been in Homeland Security and then kind of discuss and describe a little bit about the responsibilities of a Senior science advisor. So that being said, you know I've I've been in DHSSMT since 2016, so roughly 7 years, but within the Department of Homeland Security since 2007. So most of the life of the department and that career includes both working at the within the components, particularly FEMA as well as working at headquarters and management serving as the department's Geospatial Information Officer and of course now at S&T serving as a Senior science advisor. So that gives me some unique perspective One, the perspective of the scientist two is anchoring that science to operational mission because of experience the mission and and therefore I have some some experience in terms of executing and on that mission. And then of course looking at the the management aspects of how do we implement technologies and solutions for the for the department. You know in my role as a senior science advisor, a senior science advisors are small in number, but we have some key responsibilities within the Department of of Homeland Security for SMT.
You know one of those key responsibilities is look across the DHS mission space and the science and technology domains to identify shared problems or emerging challenges. And then look to shape those shared interest into opportunities to conduct foundational science and leverage DHSS&D tools like the long range BA as and the larger R&D communities to develop novel solutions or Dr. Breakthrough technologies. I will say I use the term technologies here broadly and I think you kind of set the stage in in explaining what the LRBA is and I'm and I use it intentionally broadly because those solutions may extend beyond information technology. They could involve new assessment protocols, novel materials, advanced diagnostic capabilities for example.
Just to just to give some some some idea for folks, you know in in terms of resilience. You know, I've been look at my responsibilities to look across those missions and science domains and and and look at it through the lens of adaptation and resilience, really perceiving what is the evolving threat landscape and what is the emerging science that can be applied across DHS missions to help us achieve our operational goals around resilience. And that of course means recognizing that resilience is highly uncertain and is and is changing rapidly over the future.
And that means in, you know, science and technical speak. You know, we have to recognize that we need to look more at more than just trying to harden our cyber, physical and social systems. It means we also need to enable those systems to adapt to these uncertain and changing conditions. And we need to realize that many of our our traditional adaptation and mitigation and resilience options have a shelf life.
So achieving resilience is going to require that we pursue a mix of solutions and interventions and and technology innovations both to more effectively respond to the multitude of the potential risk, the emerging threats and the precipitous disruptions that we're facing. Now, I will kind of explain now why is resilience crossed multiple components. I think most people easily gravitate or come back and say, OK, so you're you put this topic together to support FEMA. FEMA is one of many components that we put this topic together to support.
A resilience really crosses that component mission space. DHS components face similar challenges from threat vectors such as climate change, catastrophic disasters, extreme weather, and even emerging technology risk. For example, U.S. Coast Guard and CBP are having to operate in extreme climate conditions and a rapidly changing security and Arctic domain that is stressing their missions and and inviting new opportunities for innovative ideas around how to make their their missions and operations more resilient. Our Cyber Security Infrastructure Security Agency, SISA is looking to ensure our infrastructure systems are more resilient against those multitude of cyber and physical threats. So they're trying to build resilience against new and emergent cyber risk, at the same time wanting to increase and strengthen the physical resilience of our our infrastructure sectors against threats like climate change and and extreme weather.
And then there's the social dimensions of the problem of how do we ensure that our communities and society is resilient against these emergent risks and what is the intersection between technology innovation and adaptive risk management. So, so that'll give you at least a bit of a flavor of, you know how I'm looking at the problem, how did we start to shape the topic around the problem and why we perceive that there's opportunities for the R&D community to submit ideas across a broad spectrum of DHS mission and operations? Thank you. That was that was a lot And a small group means you're elite, right. There's there's only a few of them.
That means you're an elite group, right. So you've you've gone pretty pretty well into this. But let me ask you if there's additional thoughts you have on this.
So resilience is a broad term and you've talked about those in many, many different aspects. Is there anything you want to add about what what the scope is of what your team does in in terms of the resilience area? Yeah, I mean to be honest we we look at resilience and and pursue a lot of different types of innovation across the different operational sectors of the department. I think what's unique about this topic is we really tried to tease out this adaptation aspect of resilience, recognizing you know that we're not going to be able to be resilient against everything.
We're not going to be able to do disaster proof ourselves against every disruption risk and threat. And that means we're going to need to evolve our our adaptive capacity. And that's what I think is really unique about this topic because it starts to to drive the innovation and R&D community around what novel solutions and technologies do they have to offer to help us address all those hazards, all those different threats that can enhance both DHS operational resilience but also could be transferred to help our extended stakeholders for example in the community and and infrastructure sectors. So thank you for, for referencing the topic. I mean basically you're doing resilience, you're doing this and and you're pursuing your goals and and the scope of of your you know mission or or pieces of of the mission through many, many channels not just LRBAA.
And so the topic is just one piece of that. So to that and and you again touched on your reading my mind on the questions you touched on a little bit but So what what do you see as ideal you know submissions or what are you what are you hoping that this topic can more specifically address versus the broader resilience effort that you're you're working. Yeah.
So, So what why don't I kind of try and hone in on a few areas that we think are are are key challenges that we would like to to see the R&D community address through this topic around adaptive risk management and then kind of walk into answering your question if you don't mind. I think, you know, we're really looking for solution providers to propose and make submissions around how can we address climate change, no doubt how can we address environmental degradation and extreme weather events. But also there's other interactions between Earth and human systems. You know, I could give you a variety of statistics and not to talk through those statistics. Most of those statistics are well known by the community.
There's more disasters, there's increasing risk. You know the you know there's more extreme weather we're facing more extreme heat more of our our our mission operators and stakeholders are are exposed to extreme heat environments and and other situations. You know our our infrastructure is aging you know it it wasn't necessarily built to to cope with these increasing conditions. You know and I'll give you you know maybe an example and and hone in on on one particular critical infrastructure you know but but but give you larger context as to why why solutions around infrastructure are are clearly an area of interest within this topic domain. You know if you take the latest report card on on America's infrastructure, America got an overall score of AC minus that's not very good.
Now there's a variety of factors that relate to that in terms of its aging, you know it's under maintained, you know the risk profile is changing but there are clear issues that where where new technologies and innovations can help us to address those challenges. One is that we know that disproportionately disadvantaged and underserved communities, you know are are are are affected by disruptions within with with infrastructure and those impacts, you know, are more acute. We also know that water and energy are clearly critical life lines that most of our societal services rely on to function. And also if you just take water, the water infrastructure sector and I'll give you a couple statistics just for contacts. You know there's 10,000 miles of levy whose location and condition we don't fully understand. You know there's over 2300 high hazard potential dams and many of those are low head dams and we don't have a full inventory of those dams nor do we have an understanding of which dams are orphan dams and what the risk are not just to the public but for for first responders, you know, and there's over 600 million miles in streams and 13 a million acres of lakes and reservoirs and ponds that are considered impaired.
So that tells you that those, those those assets have an increased risk of exposure and impacts from these evolving threat vectors such as climate change or environmental degradation. So that's clearly gives you an idea of what's the relationship between risk what's and resilience and why we're trying to pursue a more R&D around adaptive risk management. Yeah no you go ahead I'll I'll pause there.
There's a lot to that we can unpack just in in in that two-minute answer. Yeah that would that's a lot of information and like I said at the beginning it's your your job title sounds important and and this is only made it even more clear how important this area is. I mean it just covers a lot that is that is very impactful to. Everybody on an everyday basis. So it's it's really maybe a little bit overwhelming, but I'm glad to know that we have some smart folks like you out there pursuing some technology solutions and some, some, some efforts towards the the furtherance of the technology solutions. Yeah, So, so maybe I'll give a give a little bit more sense tangibly on you know what this means in terms of an someone that's interested in submitting an idea or an application.
So the, so the topic we're really specifically interested in risk sciences, regenerative technologies and adaptive energy engineering practices. Those could be designed, developed, integrated, or you can choose to repurpose an existing technology that hasn't been utilized to support a Homeland Security use case that could enable more resilience both within our operations or our key stakeholders. We've clearly identified and I've talked to our interest in, you know, getting multiple benefits, right. If it could support one of our core missions, great. But if it could also support communities or critical infrastructure sectors like water, energy or functional areas like dam safety, that's even better.
What types of priority R&D have we considered as we were shaping this topic. You know there were really five key areas that we we identified that we were interested in driving that relate to adaptive risk management from a Homeland Security perspective and and and our and and could could spawn new and novel solutions. One is self sensing, self healing or regenerative technologies. Think of advanced material sciences where where now the physical infrastructure is not only sensing that it's under stress, but has the ability to adapt to those stresses and the implications that might mean on the future of infrastructure resilience risk assessment or planning tools.
Think of risk risk assessment or new risk assessment and planning technologies that now give us a more complete picture of risk not just in terms of understanding where those hazards are, where those those, those emergent risk and and and future conditions may may occur but now being able to relate that to how it will affect our assets, our programs and missions and and society at large. Think of new disaster proofing technologies or interventions. I don't like the word disaster proofing. It is a market market recognized term. So we we tend to use it. But what we're we're getting at is there's a lot of new technologies that could be built or designed or deployed that could help strengthen different aspects of of of our infrastructure that could or it could could help nurture new types of interventions that would allow communities to make more informed decisions on how they make themselves resilient against different different hazards and threat vectors.
And then there's more new diagnostic type technologies, you know where you know we may be able to exploit new new information technology advances to where we can. We can now get continuous monitoring which can help us improve the maintenance and the effectiveness of of management of our key assets and and infrastructure. You know, and then there's the fact that, you know, if you want to understand climate change and the risk of climate change, you can't forget about the Earth. And the earth is changing as a response to climate change. And.
And so there's a lot that we still don't understand and there's an opportunity for technologies to help improve our understanding around what are those geophysical changes to the Earth and how do we sense and how do we understand those changes. For example if subsidence is occurring and it's occurring because of of of of of polar ice melt for example, how can we detect and predict where those those high risk areas are and what kind of engineering changes solutions do we need to implement to to make our communities more adaptive to that changing landscape. So it gives you a little bit of of a broad sense and flavor of you know what those priority R&D areas are that we targeted under adaptive risk management to give the R&D community a sense of you know of some of our thinking around where we thought new and novel technologies and solutions could make a difference.
Little bit just a little bit David that's that's a lot. So, so thank you and that is an incredibly wealth, that's a wealth of information and thank you so much for sharing that. I think those are great thoughts for folks to be able to to incorporate into how they may look at what they could submit to this topic and it is very, very broad, which is great. One of the other things that I wanted to to talk about and and you you I think kind of touched on what I see as a positive and as you were doing your introduction, you talked about the different areas that you worked prior to coming to S&T and how that gave you insight into what has to happen now to really be able to take something from an idea all the way to transition or commercialize it and make it go out into the field. To that end, you and you've referenced the R&D community.
I want to make sure that we're clear that when we're going out with the LRBAA and one of the reasons we have this, that it's broad and it's seeking ideas from the community is sometimes there's ideas that come from not our usual partners and the folks that we partner with do valuable work. And you know, that's this is in no way not appreciation for the folks we've already partnered with, but when you can have a different perspective, it can bring value. Can you talk about how you think new players may be able to provide an advantage to also submitting to this topic? Yeah, I mean I think the RLRBAA is a is a resource advantage for DHS in general. It gives us that additional opportunity to reach out to that broader R&D community and and invite others that may not be those traditional players to submit ideas and and proposals for us to react to and respond to that might not otherwise have have come in to us. And and and could be out-of-the-box thinking because that you know they're they're not connected to a traditional a research a line of business.
So I do think that that gives us an advantage. I think you know the other thing that we wanted to do with this, with this topic is we also wanted to not just be broad in terms of the scope of the topic so that we could, we could encourage A multitude and and and more runway to get better ideas in. But we also scoped it to address a range of technical readiness levels. So we're kind of saying hey you know we're we're fine.
If you submit to Technical Readiness Level 2, which is really you're at the the true research stage, you got an idea, you you've kind of thought through somewhat your idea, you want now to really kind of do something with that idea. You want to apply that idea to the problem that you conceived it for and all, and you want to work with us on that because it's relevant to to DHS in the Homeland Security enterprise. And then we kind of have the top end of the range at TR Technical Readiness Level 6. We're kind of saying, hey, you got it. You've got maybe you're trying to integrate known technology to use it to address a Homeland Security problem. So you're really more at the prototype stage.
You've got technology that you can put together and you want to prototype it and demonstrate it that that you can solve the problem using these types of integrated or our new technologies. So we've really created some flexibility and opportunity that one stimulates some some innovation and two provides A pathway into into commercialization. You know and that gets to your earlier question.
I said I'm going to walk into this this answer of our end objective for this, for this topic. What we we hope to achieve besides just solving DHS problems which is we wouldn't have put the top together if we weren't wanting to do that is that we really want to stimulate some applied research and development and adaptive risk management. We want to be able to transfer some of those advances to DHS component missions and their key stakeholders and of course we're we're particularly interested in in in novel solutions but even more so in interoperable solutions that add operational value to multiple stakeholders and that have that that potential for commercial viability you know so. So it's kind of hey you got a cool idea you got the ability to to to generate a prototype. You know you've got to think through.
OK well if you're successful you know what what would be next for you you know and and and that's gets into a little bit of you know what what is a good submission, what is a good submission right. And and I'll because we want to get to not just solving the problem but delivering solutions that can be implemented across our stakeholders and sustained by the marketplace, you know and and and if you want me to talk about what may make a good submission happy to do that. If you'd like to ask me another question beforehand, we can do that too, you know, yeah, I well, one, I want to do a clarification because you make a really good point about that.
If you have something you know that has already been out in the industry, has been commercialized and at the beginning I said we don't pursue mature technologies. And I want to be clear about the fact that we can pursue taking a mature technology and using it for a different application that requires R&D to get to there. So, exactly, and that was my point up front of I kept saying we could purpose existing technology against the Homeland Security problem where that technology has never been utilized or exploited.
And I I wanted to make sure I wasn't keeping those folks you know going, but we have something and we could do it over here. Yeah, if it needs further RND for this application that changes that TRL for that application and it is now something that we can pursue further RNDR test and evaluation those types of activities for us. So thanks for for bringing that up and and providing that opportunity to clarify. So I do have a a quick question before we we get to what makes a good submission, which is a a great question.
When we're so as as a new player perhaps and I always make sure folks understand we we want your innovation, we want you to come to the table, but we also need you to come to the table as a partner. And as a partner you have some responsibilities and that responsibility is kind of getting doing your research and your homework to understand what what we need, what our end result is. And it can be challenging for somebody that's new to this area or this mission or whatever to to really understand the space, what do you have and and sometimes finding the good resources, the right resources can be challenging. Do you have suggestions I think you provided us with some that we we can display now on some resources where folks can start if they are new to this area. Yeah I Jesse I think that's a great segue.
We we did provide a list of some what we think are some informative resources that relate to this topic that we encourage folks to take a look at. There are is even more listed within those pages. So you know when you're looking at addressing climate change and and you're you're looking at the department statement and and frameworks around climate change. You know there's additional links and and and sub substantive reports and and and documents there to help them better understand what some of those challenges are beyond the buzzwords that I've used in the the short one hour webinar that we have around you know aging infrastructure and environmental degradation. If you look at the the DHS resilience page, it also gives a list of some activities and programs that are underway and so you'll become more familiar with some of those those efforts within the department as you're doing your homework to understand DH s s role within resilience and some of its its key key activities. You know, we also listed climate resilience.
Clearly it's a it's a key area. Climate resilience and adaptation are key areas. Yeah.
One is you know we wanted to make sure given that you know FEMA is a big player in in the climate space for Homeland Security to spotlight that. You know they have a variety and a number of resources that particularly touch on risk management but also touch on other aspects of climate resilience and then climate adaptation. We wanted to put out some additional material that the from S&T on some research and development areas and priorities and and efforts that we have underway to give you a sense on what what we're already looking at.
Maybe you have a better idea or solution that compares with you know something that we're already doing or or maybe it's an opportunity for you to better understand and a little bit more depth and breath, you know what kind of R&D we're really trying to pursue. And then of course you know us as senior sciences, you know worked with our division leader in the technology Center's division of S&P to put out a forward leading strategic research agenda. You know and that that includes references and and some some key areas of interest particularly around emerging and over the horizon R&D interest and needs around earth system science climate change and you know resilience and and and A and a couple other threads including artificial intelligence you know which I'd be remiss not to at least bring up in the conversation because when you talk about adaptive risk management assessment and planning there's there's plenty of opportunity for new innovation around the the the utilization of of AI in that space. Fantastic. Thank you. I I think it's always wonderful to be able to point folks to some place that they can start instead of leaving them hanging.
So this is good. So to to your point we want good submissions right. I always say we want we want to increase the number of folks that we can reach. We want to make sure that we're getting ideas from the broader communities. Again new players, but we don't just want more submissions, we want good submissions. So can you talk about for you what you think would be included in a good submission and you know in terms of like the types of areas that maybe need to be addressed or or the quality of of of the elements or what you think that is that defines good submission? Sure.
I think I'll I'll kind of address it more from what you should think of in terms of making sure that you include in your submission to make it a quality submission. You know, kind of keep it at the bullet point level, but give a little bit of context. You know clearly, you know a good submission will clearly define the problem or challenge being solved. It'll explain and describe what makes the solution or approach unique or novel. You should also be able to, within your your submission, provide a clear picture of the solution being proposed and what the outputs. What what is the product of the of the R and DF are going to going to be or what is it going to look like? And then of course as you you move through the process you need to have a sound approach and a reasonable budget for executing your your your proposal, your ID or your concept.
Just a little bit more nuanced. You know you. Of course the first stage you mentioned is the white paper. You know, one of the things that I always, you know, make try and make clear and and and emphasize to the audience is that you know white paper should not be a commentary on DHS. You know you should be providing some context on the size, scope and scale of the problem you're trying to solve.
But you need to do your homework and leverage the some of the resources we shared so that you can better articulate the benefits and the uniqueness of your solution that you're proposing. Don't submit a commentary valuable, valuable advice. Thank you. And you know, earlier, you talked about a lot of things like, you know, infrastructure and the things that we need to tackle. And there was a lot to do there.
And it just kind of made me think of, of funding, right? So as as folks are submitting things, they may have fantastic ideas. And so I want to ask you about funding kind of from 2 perspectives. 1 is as I've, as I've talked about in all of the LRBAA Today episodes, we don't give a threshold for the funding for LRBAA. And I think the, if if nothing else, from from, from this webinar, you should see the vast amount of work there is in terms of opportunity to be to be proposed and to be done under this topic. And given that obviously not all of the elements, not all of the proposals submitted would come under the same amount of funding required. So two things.
One, I mean how important is it that folks are proposing something that has some efficiency in terms of the funding resource that they're asking for. And then the other is just helping folks to understand why there would be a, A, a an example of something that would have like we we want this much funding. We'll make sure you're pretty accurate in your first submission because if you say yes and then it ends up being a lot more Now we've now we've gone down the path that well I said yes originally because I thought this would be something, you know, that was worth the the funding that you're requesting.
But now I'm not sure that that fits within our budget in terms of the prioritization of this need. And hopefully all that makes sense has a question for you, David. Yeah.
So I think, I think first to be very candid to the audience is that that the LRBA is not a fishing experiment. You know it is an innovation advantage tool for for DHSS&D, so you you should be looking to submit credible make makes, credible submissions and and a credible submission means you need to have the ability to think through effectively and reasonably what the what your budget needs to be to accomplish your research objective. You know that that's the first thing you know. The 2nd is that we we expect that there's going to be a range of submissions because not all ideas and proposals and concepts are the same. You know, someone idea may be a low budget idea because it's more about, you know, developing a new assessment protocol, for example. Our approach another may be a more robust, it's an advanced material solution that you know will produce these types of you know, you know capabilities you know and it might be on a on a higher you know budget amount.
So but that's the intent of the long range. BIBAA is to be flexible allow that agility from from the the R&D community to to work with us. I think the Third Point I'll make is that and you opened it up, you opened up with this and I'll reaffirm it is that when you engage with us through the LRBA we are considering that you are engaging us as a partner.
You know and as we work with you as a partner, you know I think some of the the issues and and and concerns that will will come from the budget, from related to funding and budget levels gets worked out as you work through the process. So you start with the white paper you get, you get selected and and asked to to to conduct a virtual pitch. You you make make it through the virtual pitch and you get invited to submit a full proposal. Throughout that process we're engaging with you and providing you feedback that in turn helps you refine your, you know each submission you make through that three stage process because it's not just us giving you feedback but you're also asking have have the opportunity to ask us questions throughout that process. And for clarity the the feedback through the process is in the way of questions that are being asked and and the conversation where we're can't provide guidance. So just want to make sure I'm setting the expectations of the folks committee.
All right. Thank you so much. I have one more question before we start going out to audience questions.
So just you know high dreams, big big ideas end state what would what would be ideal scenario from and called called doing this LRBAA topic of success. So I think you know, we could, we could put an easy success measure in saying that, you know, if some of the technologies that we invested into this LRBAA were successful and they were able to produce a modest improvement in the effectiveness of our adaptation and resilience investments that we're making across the US government over the next 10 years, then that would result in not just a significant decrease in in, in, in, in exposure, disasters exposure, meaning you know, more risk reduction, but it would also result in a significant savings in terms of billions of dollars. But more importantly, the key result would be less disaster suffering. And that's what we really hope to accomplish Even if just one of our technologies is truly successful, makes it through, gets implemented and commercialized and it saves lives and and and makes our mission more effective then we we will have been successful with this LRBA fantastic, that's that's a very, that's a great goal.
That's a great goal. I love it. All right, So we're going to go to audience questions, and we'll be able to take a few based on time if we. But I want to. While you're submitting those, make sure you have a chance to submit them. I'll tell you how you can find this topic and I think we have a graphic to be able to help that.
Great, because I don't have all those things memorized. All right, so visit our our portal. If if you can't remember this right here now and and it's harder, so just baa.dhs.gov and then you can, it'll take you to a page where you can click on LRBAA. Once you get to the LRBAA page, you're going to click on Funding and then select Open Funding Opportunities and then this this page that we're we're showing a sample of right here. It will show up and under Research Area you'll select Managing Incidents.
Then you'll Scroll down. It'll look like the topics will look like what's shown on the bottom of this page and you'll look for MGMT 08/05. From there there'll be a button to Click to say you want to do a submission. If you haven't registered your company yet, you'll register your company and you can submit your three page white paper and quad chart as the initial submission. I will note there's no due date for the initial submissions under the LRBA if the topic is open. If it's under the LRBA and it shows up there, then you can you can initiate that that proposal submission process.
All right. So I do want to try to take a couple questions and I think I saw some showing up in the chat. So first one, please talk in detail about infrastructure.
What are the key concerns and needs that DHS is looking to address? I don't know if you have additional thoughts. I know you touched on infrastructure in there a lot, but yeah, I mean I gave a few examples around the the water infrastructure sector. I mean you know we're interested in solutions that can help us adapt those systems to better cope with these changing and emerging conditions.
And we know that those systems are are experiencing different levels of exposure. There's also gaps in terms of our understanding of the of of the level of exposure for those those systems and the implications of potential solutions to mitigate. You know, you know there, there are opportunities like I said to look at you know, potentially proposing new ways to us to do more more effective risk assessment across infrastructure sectors.
You know, I I mentioned that that that that intersection between water and energy, you know there's a growing convergence between infrastructure sectors. So you know if water, if energy gets disrupted then water and and and other utilities are are disrupted. You know vice versa, you know some cases if water infrastructure is disrupted then then other critical services you know so that so there's a lot of of opportunity areas is there and then there's the you know the the the more material type output opportunities.
You know where we're trying to look at ways that we we know we can't move the infrastructure. We know that the infrastructure is going to be exposed. But are there ways that we can make do more informed adaptive management or implement more adaptive solutions that help that infrastructure whether it's natural or built, meaning meaning Gray, it could be Gray, green or or blue infrastructure, right ocean infrastructure to deal with this this changing threat landscape? Thank you. So the the next one is interesting and I think it might be a combined answer here. We might have to collaborate on this is can LRBA include vulnerability testing to identify systems and component deficiencies.
So to me just I want to put out that when we're talking about Canada. Canada do T&E, yes, T&E can fall under there but it can't be a hey bring us your, you know components and and we'll tell you what vulnerabilities they are That's that's not what that would be under support services. So do you have thoughts on vulnerability testing to identify systems and component deficiencies in way in ways that it may be able to fly under the.
Yeah I think you're spot on. I don't think the topic is the is, is is is is appropriate if you're trying to to solicit the department to perform test and evaluation services on on infrastructure. That being said if you have a new approach to doing vulnerability assessment and you would like to demonstrate that and test that approach against a variety of of infrastructure systems and environments. Then that would be an appropriate opportunity because you're proposing or you're looking to propose a a a new way of do of doing doing business and practice within the department or even if you if you have a new way of doing it and you want to do the T&E part and you want us to help fund it, then yes we can we can do to you and that right. And that that gets to you have a prototype and you you want us to help prove out that your your prototype is viable for for Homeland Security mission space. Yes.
All right. There's there's two more. But given time I'm just going to answer them quickly it's do we provide feedback on an unaccepted white papers? No we we don't provide feedback on that. And then there's a, can you please talk about the structure of the white paper.
We purposely keep it unstructured. We're looking for this to be a low lift for you guys. So we're we're not trying to dictate how and and given the vast differences of of what can come to us we we do not have a structure for that white paper. All right.
Thank you so much. That was a lot a lot a lot of information and I'm so happy that we were able to to bring that to folks. I appreciate your time. David thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you it was my pleasure.
Final thoughts for no I mean it's always great to engage the the the larger stakeholder community and and and the science and R&D community and and be able to to discuss and and share with them our thinking behind you know key key investments and and and areas of of research priority and encourage that they they collaborate and partner with us. So again, I appreciate the opportunity to to support this webinar. Thank you, thank you, thank you. If if all of that information was too much for one go round, don't worry, we recorded this session.
We will be posting it to our YouTube channel if you want to sign up to join our listserv, we have some key resources and I can tell you how to get there. So our key websites thebaa.dhs.gov that I mentioned earlier will take you to our portal page and from there there's a video that provides more detail on the LRBAA process. I went over at high level, but you can see something there. We also have the LRBA Today webinar series. This is where the current ones or not current, the previous ones are that can have now been posted.
This one will be up once we are able to get it five O 8 compliant. Then there's the OIP portal and going there you'll have opportunity to see multiple programs or agency website and and about how to to do business with DHS. And I want to thank everybody for joining us. If you go to the portal website and you scroll all the way down to the bottom, there's a place that says you can sign up for our listener. If you put that information in there, when we get the recording ready and have it posted, we will send out an e-mail.
So you'll know how to go back and catch all those elements that that David talked about that you might have missed and and remind you to look up low head dams and orphan dams. I think for the two things I'm going to go look up. So thank you everybody.
Thanks for joining us and hope to see you at the next episode.
2023-12-25 14:45
