Program Summary
The Virtual Institute for Earth’s Water (VIEW) will support research needed for a sustainable global water future. This encompasses quantifying and addressing sustainable water use, improving projections of freshwater resources, preparing for climate extremes, and quantifying linkages to ecosystem resilience, the carbon cycle, and climate change mitigation including the food/energy/water nexus. Schmidt Sciences intends to fund multiple transformational research projects that will be crucial in informing freshwater management, producing results that are poised to support decision-making worldwide within the next decade.
Schmidt Sciences’ Virtual Institutes are high-risk, high-impact international networks intentionally formed to pursue timely opportunities to significantly increase our knowledge of the natural world and apply it for the positive benefit of science or society.
Our Mission
The intended outcome of VIEW is to advance a holistic and integrated understanding of global freshwater availability and its evolution at spatial and temporal scales that will: enable effective and equitable seasonal to multi-decadal planning and decision-making for conservation, energy, food, and water availability at regional scales; quantify the limits of sustainable water extraction; identify regions and ecosystems facing systemic risk within the coming decades; and address opportunities for a sustainable water future for everyone. To that end, VIEW will tackle crucial knowledge gaps in freshwater research and facilitate an integrated approach to global freshwater study and management under the umbrella of future climate change scenarios, motivated by the following overarching questions:
How does the changing hydrologic cycle impact climate change mitigation (e.g., by informing the future of the terrestrial carbon sink and energy transitions) and vice versa?
How attainable is water sustainability at local, regional and global scales?
What will be the impacts of changing precipitation and temperature extremes on terrestrial water, and what are the limits to the resilience of human and natural systems?
Expressions of Intent (EOI)
We are seeking brief (2 page) expressions of intent (EOIs), followed by invitation-only proposals, for research projects that make significant progress towards a comprehensive understanding of the global freshwater system, including human and natural drivers, informing freshwater management, and predicting future changes in freshwater availability. EOI submissions must explain how the proposed methodological advances, novel observations or use of observations, or advances in modeling or theory will enable progress towards VIEW’s motivating questions.
Projects funded by VIEW will enable a transformational change in our ability to answer the overarching questions of the program. Addressing these questions will require innovative, new ways of synthesizing models with data, integrating human use (including infrastructure) into our understanding and modeling of the global freshwater system, and representing the dynamics of the global freshwater cycle, including both human and natural systems, within a coupled representation of the Earth system. VIEW research projects should be aimed at one or more of three targeted research opportunities:
Develop a water reanalysis framework that will fill in knowledge gaps through state-of-the-art quantification and mapping of historical and current water availability and use. Research responding to this targeted opportunity will result in spatially and temporally consistent water data and information that is critical for understanding and managing freshwater globally. Such a reanalysis product must therefore reflect both human and natural drivers of change in freshwater stocks and flows (for example, uniting precipitation, groundwater, irrigation, etc.).
Quantify water risk and assess sustainable practices taking into account precipitation and evaporation as well as terrestrial water. Work targeting this opportunity may include research at the food/energy/water nexus, focus on water infrastructure, or characterizing abrupt changes in water availability (including water quality). With this focused effort, we expect to be able to explore water availability coupled with use, bridging the gap between studies of human and natural systems, and provide a framework for understanding and making decisions on future water availability.
Explore scenarios and counterfactuals through transformational change in the representation of the natural and human demand-driven freshwater cycle at sub-seasonal to decadal scales using data-driven methods (such as machine learning or emulation) or Earth System Models. This is expected to result in significantly improved projections of precipitation and water availability, with the ability to inform future planning for extreme events in different regional climates (desert, monsoonal, alpine, etc.) as well as globally.
Projects with a regional focus (e.g. proof of concept at regional scale) may be within scope, but should have global relevance. All approaches are expected to unify two or more hydrologic research areas towards advancing a holistic treatment of the freshwater cycle.
Crafting Your Proposal
EOI submissions should provide a 2-page project proposal with a budget of up to USD 10 million to support a 5-year project, which includes the following information:
A project narrative, including:
The primary scientific objectives of your proposed project
How your project responds to one or more of the three targeted opportunities outlined in VIEW
The scope of the proposed research: we encourage projects that are global in scope; although compelling projects of local or regional scope that demonstrate global relevance will be considered
How your results might be used to inform environmental decision-making, management, investment, or policy
A clear research plan, including:
Key goals, scientific hypotheses, and methodologies
A brief description of data and computational needs
A preliminary description of team composition, and potential external institutional partnerships, including:
The proposed team members’ scientific ability, relevant expertise, and scientific project management experience
The EOI proposal document should not include any PI, team, and partner names and affiliations, as we will anonymize the submissions during the evaluation process. Team names and affiliations will be collected in a separate form.
An individual can serve on multiple EOIs, including being the PI on multiple EOIs.
The capacity of the PIs and partner institutions to run a large project
A preliminary budget narrative, totaling up to USD 10 million over 5 years, which includes a brief description of project expenses such as salary, equipment, etc.
Project Priorities
Diversity in Team Composition: We expect project teams to prioritize disciplinary, national, geographic, and demographic diversity and to provide opportunities for early career scientists. The team composition should reflect a range of disciplines as needed. Proposed project team members can be presented as preliminary suggestions at the EOI stage, and can be changed at the RFP stage due to availability and/or fit.
Open Access: Project teams will be expected to make results and methods as transparent as possible across the Virtual Institute and publicly available as open source and open data in a timely manner, in accordance with FAIR principles.
Eligible Institutions
Research teams in university, national laboratory, institute, or agency settings.
Multi-institute research consortiums, with regional and global partnerships (strongly encouraged). There is no requirement to include U.S.-based institutions.
Teams which include industry and NGO partners.
EOI Submission Guidelines
To be considered for funding, proposals should adhere to the following guidelines:
Page Limit: Proposals should not exceed 2 pages, including figures.
Removal of Identifying Information: The EOI proposal document should not include any PI, team, and partner names and affiliations, as we will anonymize the submissions during the evaluation process. Team names and affiliations will be collected in a separate form.
Language and Formatting: The EOI should be written in English, and include no more than 2 pages of body text typed in single-spaced 10-point (or larger) font. The EOI should be formatted as .pdf.
Citations: We request that citations are formatted similarly to the Vancouver reference style (numbered) instead of the Harvard style (generally, “Author, year”). References should be listed in an additional document uploaded separately.
Award Process
The EOIs will be anonymized (removing names and references) for a blind evaluation by a committee of advisors and Schmidt Sciences. We intend to notify all applicants of the status of their application in August of 2024. At this point, we will extend an invitation to select teams to write a full proposal including more detail regarding budgets, project operations, timelines and team composition. Invited teams will have roughly 60 days to submit a full proposal.
We may award up to four projects in the first year.
Helpful Resources
FAQ Document and Questions
Responses to frequently asked questions about this VIEW request for EOIs can be found in the FAQ document here.
If you have additional questions, please direct them to water@schmidtsciences.org
Webinars
The VIEW team hosted two informational webinars on this EOI via Zoom on Thursday, April 18, 2024 at 7 am ET and 5 pm ET. The webinars will each be 30 minutes, and will provide an overview of VIEW, information on how to apply to this EOI request, and include time for questions.
If you would like to review the recording for Webinar 1, you can find it linked here.
If you would like to review the recording for Webinar 2, you can find it linked here.
You can find the slides linked here.
Office Hours
The VIEW team will also offer office hours beginning on Friday, April 19, 2024. You may schedule a time using this link. Please note that many questions may already be answered in the VIEW FAQ document.
Additional Information
Schmidt Sciences’ Virtual Institutes are high-risk, high-impact international networks intentionally formed to pursue timely opportunities to significantly increase our knowledge of the natural world and apply it for the positive benefit of science or society. The Virtual Institute for Earth’s Water (VIEW) is part of Schmidt Sciences’ newly formed Climate Institute, which aims to advance fundamental science to understand the implications of climate change mitigation strategies and to ensure that such planning takes into account Earth system feedbacks and constraints. The Climate Institute works towards a synthesis of new climate science, forging connections between Schmidt Sciences-supported work. As such, all Climate Institute projects, including VIEW projects, are encouraged to collaborate and connect within and across Schmidt Sciences programs. Programs that VIEW will closely interact with include Schmidt Sciences’ Virtual Institute for Scientific Software (VISS), and the Climate Institute’s Virtual Earth Systems Research Institute (VESRI), Ocean Biogeochemistry Virtual Institute (OBVI), and Virtual Institute for the Carbon Cycle (VICC), as well as potential new initiatives focused on energy and decarbonization modeling, and AI emulator research for climate and energy models.
Virtual Institute for Earth’s Water (VIEW)
Program Summary
The Virtual Institute for Earth’s Water (VIEW) will support research needed for a sustainable global water future. This encompasses quantifying and addressing sustainable water use, improving projections of freshwater resources, preparing for climate extremes, and quantifying linkages to ecosystem resilience, the carbon cycle, and climate change mitigation including the food/energy/water nexus. Schmidt Sciences intends to fund multiple transformational research projects that will be crucial in informing freshwater management, producing results that are poised to support decision-making worldwide within the next decade.
Schmidt Sciences’ Virtual Institutes are high-risk, high-impact international networks intentionally formed to pursue timely opportunities to significantly increase our knowledge of the natural world and apply it for the positive benefit of science or society.
Our Mission
The intended outcome of VIEW is to advance a holistic and integrated understanding of global freshwater availability and its evolution at spatial and temporal scales that will: enable effective and equitable seasonal to multi-decadal planning and decision-making for conservation, energy, food, and water availability at regional scales; quantify the limits of sustainable water extraction; identify regions and ecosystems facing systemic risk within the coming decades; and address opportunities for a sustainable water future for everyone. To that end, VIEW will tackle crucial knowledge gaps in freshwater research and facilitate an integrated approach to global freshwater study and management under the umbrella of future climate change scenarios, motivated by the following overarching questions:
How does the changing hydrologic cycle impact climate change mitigation (e.g., by informing the future of the terrestrial carbon sink and energy transitions) and vice versa?
How attainable is water sustainability at local, regional and global scales?
What will be the impacts of changing precipitation and temperature extremes on terrestrial water, and what are the limits to the resilience of human and natural systems?
Expressions of Intent (EOI)
We are seeking brief (2 page) expressions of intent (EOIs), followed by invitation-only proposals, for research projects that make significant progress towards a comprehensive understanding of the global freshwater system, including human and natural drivers, informing freshwater management, and predicting future changes in freshwater availability. EOI submissions must explain how the proposed methodological advances, novel observations or use of observations, or advances in modeling or theory will enable progress towards VIEW’s motivating questions.
Projects funded by VIEW will enable a transformational change in our ability to answer the overarching questions of the program. Addressing these questions will require innovative, new ways of synthesizing models with data, integrating human use (including infrastructure) into our understanding and modeling of the global freshwater system, and representing the dynamics of the global freshwater cycle, including both human and natural systems, within a coupled representation of the Earth system. VIEW research projects should be aimed at one or more of three targeted research opportunities:
Develop a water reanalysis framework that will fill in knowledge gaps through state-of-the-art quantification and mapping of historical and current water availability and use. Research responding to this targeted opportunity will result in spatially and temporally consistent water data and information that is critical for understanding and managing freshwater globally. Such a reanalysis product must therefore reflect both human and natural drivers of change in freshwater stocks and flows (for example, uniting precipitation, groundwater, irrigation, etc.).
Quantify water risk and assess sustainable practices taking into account precipitation and evaporation as well as terrestrial water. Work targeting this opportunity may include research at the food/energy/water nexus, focus on water infrastructure, or characterizing abrupt changes in water availability (including water quality). With this focused effort, we expect to be able to explore water availability coupled with use, bridging the gap between studies of human and natural systems, and provide a framework for understanding and making decisions on future water availability.
Explore scenarios and counterfactuals through transformational change in the representation of the natural and human demand-driven freshwater cycle at sub-seasonal to decadal scales using data-driven methods (such as machine learning or emulation) or Earth System Models. This is expected to result in significantly improved projections of precipitation and water availability, with the ability to inform future planning for extreme events in different regional climates (desert, monsoonal, alpine, etc.) as well as globally.
Projects with a regional focus (e.g. proof of concept at regional scale) may be within scope, but should have global relevance. All approaches are expected to unify two or more hydrologic research areas towards advancing a holistic treatment of the freshwater cycle.
Crafting Your Proposal
EOI submissions should provide a 2-page project proposal with a budget of up to USD 10 million to support a 5-year project, which includes the following information:
A project narrative, including:
The primary scientific objectives of your proposed project
How your project responds to one or more of the three targeted opportunities outlined in VIEW
The scope of the proposed research: we encourage projects that are global in scope; although compelling projects of local or regional scope that demonstrate global relevance will be considered
How your results might be used to inform environmental decision-making, management, investment, or policy
A clear research plan, including:
Key goals, scientific hypotheses, and methodologies
A brief description of data and computational needs
A preliminary description of team composition, and potential external institutional partnerships, including:
The proposed team members’ scientific ability, relevant expertise, and scientific project management experience
The EOI proposal document should not include any PI, team, and partner names and affiliations, as we will anonymize the submissions during the evaluation process. Team names and affiliations will be collected in a separate form.
An individual can serve on multiple EOIs, including being the PI on multiple EOIs.
The capacity of the PIs and partner institutions to run a large project
A preliminary budget narrative, totaling up to USD 10 million over 5 years, which includes a brief description of project expenses such as salary, equipment, etc.
Project Priorities
Diversity in Team Composition: We expect project teams to prioritize disciplinary, national, geographic, and demographic diversity and to provide opportunities for early career scientists. The team composition should reflect a range of disciplines as needed. Proposed project team members can be presented as preliminary suggestions at the EOI stage, and can be changed at the RFP stage due to availability and/or fit.
Open Access: Project teams will be expected to make results and methods as transparent as possible across the Virtual Institute and publicly available as open source and open data in a timely manner, in accordance with FAIR principles.
Eligible Institutions
Research teams in university, national laboratory, institute, or agency settings.
Multi-institute research consortiums, with regional and global partnerships (strongly encouraged). There is no requirement to include U.S.-based institutions.
Teams which include industry and NGO partners.
EOI Submission Guidelines
To be considered for funding, proposals should adhere to the following guidelines:
Page Limit: Proposals should not exceed 2 pages, including figures.
Removal of Identifying Information: The EOI proposal document should not include any PI, team, and partner names and affiliations, as we will anonymize the submissions during the evaluation process. Team names and affiliations will be collected in a separate form.
Language and Formatting: The EOI should be written in English, and include no more than 2 pages of body text typed in single-spaced 10-point (or larger) font. The EOI should be formatted as .pdf.
Citations: We request that citations are formatted similarly to the Vancouver reference style (numbered) instead of the Harvard style (generally, “Author, year”). References should be listed in an additional document uploaded separately.
Award Process
The EOIs will be anonymized (removing names and references) for a blind evaluation by a committee of advisors and Schmidt Sciences. We intend to notify all applicants of the status of their application in August of 2024. At this point, we will extend an invitation to select teams to write a full proposal including more detail regarding budgets, project operations, timelines and team composition. Invited teams will have roughly 60 days to submit a full proposal.
We may award up to four projects in the first year.
Helpful Resources
FAQ Document and Questions
Responses to frequently asked questions about this VIEW request for EOIs can be found in the FAQ document here.
If you have additional questions, please direct them to water@schmidtsciences.org
Webinars
The VIEW team hosted two informational webinars on this EOI via Zoom on Thursday, April 18, 2024 at 7 am ET and 5 pm ET. The webinars will each be 30 minutes, and will provide an overview of VIEW, information on how to apply to this EOI request, and include time for questions.
If you would like to review the recording for Webinar 1, you can find it linked here.
If you would like to review the recording for Webinar 2, you can find it linked here.
You can find the slides linked here.
Office Hours
The VIEW team will also offer office hours beginning on Friday, April 19, 2024. You may schedule a time using this link. Please note that many questions may already be answered in the VIEW FAQ document.
Additional Information
Schmidt Sciences’ Virtual Institutes are high-risk, high-impact international networks intentionally formed to pursue timely opportunities to significantly increase our knowledge of the natural world and apply it for the positive benefit of science or society. The Virtual Institute for Earth’s Water (VIEW) is part of Schmidt Sciences’ newly formed Climate Institute, which aims to advance fundamental science to understand the implications of climate change mitigation strategies and to ensure that such planning takes into account Earth system feedbacks and constraints. The Climate Institute works towards a synthesis of new climate science, forging connections between Schmidt Sciences-supported work. As such, all Climate Institute projects, including VIEW projects, are encouraged to collaborate and connect within and across Schmidt Sciences programs. Programs that VIEW will closely interact with include Schmidt Sciences’ Virtual Institute for Scientific Software (VISS), and the Climate Institute’s Virtual Earth Systems Research Institute (VESRI), Ocean Biogeochemistry Virtual Institute (OBVI), and Virtual Institute for the Carbon Cycle (VICC), as well as potential new initiatives focused on energy and decarbonization modeling, and AI emulator research for climate and energy models.