Draft MARACOOS Annual Budget Template
1. Regional Management
Regional Association
$400 K
Program Management (2 x $50 K) $100 K
Subtotal
$500 K
2. Observing Subsystem
Weather
CODAR Site Support (35 x $10 K)
CODAR Technicians (3 x $100 K)
CODAR Regional Coordinator
Satellites (2 x $50 K)
Glider Technicians (3 x $100 K)
Glider Flights (4 x $50 K)
Subtotal
$100 K
$350 K
$300 K
$50 K
$100 K
$300 K
$200 K
$1,400 K
3. Data Management &
Communication
Data Management
Webpage
Subtotal
$200 K
$100 K
$300 K
4. Modeling and Analysis
STPS
Dynamical Models (3 x $100 K)
Subtotal
$100 K
$300 K
$400 K
5. Education & Outreach
Education
Outreach
Subtotal
$100 K
$100 K
$200 K
Existing Level Subtotal
$2,800 K
Program Enhancements:
CODAR Spares & Gapfilling
Glider Gapfilling & Flights
Expanded Glider Operations
(3 x $100 K)
Expanded Satellites (2 x $50 K)
Expanded Models (4 x $50 K)
New Product Development
Enhancements Subtotal
$200 K
$300 K
$300 K
$100 K
$200 K
$100 K
$1,200 K
Total
$4,000 K
General Budget Discussion:
The combined MARACOOS budget we will be submitting on Oct 1 with be for $4 M
per year for 5 years. The new $4 M annual target is the obvious combination of the
historical targets of $500 K/year for each RA and $3.5 M/year for each RCOOS.
Every year we submit the individual budgets for MACOORA and MARCOOS at these
target levels, and even though we are probably the most well funded region by the
present process, we typically get only $400 K for the RA and $1.7 M for the RCOOS
for a total of $2.1 M/year for the region. We have dealt with this level funding
scenario for 4 years now. Hopefully this round of proposals allows us to go beyond
level funding. The most recent numbers I heard are about $25 M for the regional
component of IOOS, which when split evenly between 11 RAs, puts us just above
level funding. Hopefully merit will help and we can gain a little more than an even
split.
With just above level funding as a strong possibility, I constructed the above
proposed budget based on 1) maintaining the existing MACOORA and MARCOOS
activities, 2) rounding the MARCOOS costs back up to the nearest $100 K as we do
every year in our budget before the inevitable cuts occur, and 3) enhancing the
network based on the needs identified in numerous MARCOOS phone calls and the
recent MACOORA Board Meetings.
The budget is divided into the required 5 subsystems: (1) Regional Management, (2)
Observing Subsystem, (3) Data Management and Communications (DMAC)
Subsystem, (4) Modeling and Analysis Subsystem, and (5) Education & Outreach.
For each category, I have the following annual template:
1)Regional Management.
First we preserve the existing $400 K we presently use for MACOORA activities as
the core of our regional management. This is the money we use to carry out the
functions that have historically resided in MACOORA. It is the money that will pass
through Rutgers and go directly to Delaware for Carolyn’s operation of the
corporation. We already have permission to waive any Rutgers overhead on these
pass through subcontracts, a significant university match. To these RA-like
activities, I have added the $50 K normally in the MARCOOS budget for my
management of MARCOOS, and $50 K for Carolyn for the management of the overall
RA functions. If this were a university, Carolyn would be the president, focused on
the external relations, and I would be the provost, focused on the internal workings.
This brings us up to the total target of $500 K for regional management. With
Carolyn and me providing the overall leadership, we hope to have 3 people funded
under management, including our regional coordinator, our operations coordinator,
and our stakeholder liaison (similar to a university extension service person).
Rutgers is providing the salary match for the operations manager, Mike Crowley.
2) Observing Subsystem.
This maintains the existing observational capabilities of MARCOOS at the same level
we submit every year. As usual, it is rounded up to the nearest $100 K, and we often
have to cut back from these levels. Our IOOS-supported observing network has 4
components: Weather, HF Radar, Satellites and Gliders.
Weather is maintained at the existing level of $100 K per year. It is up to Jay, our
weather lead, to decide how best to spend this. Jay has been actively pursuing the
validated ensemble weather forecast concept, and has some excellent plans for the
growing beach safety plans discussed at the last conference call.
CODAR still relies on IOOS regional support for operations. The RFP is clear that
maintaining this is a priority. Larry and I are both involved in the developing
National HF Radar network, and hope to someday move the CODAR support to the
IOOS National funding line. The idea is that will free up money to more fully
implement the regional “Coldfish” plan. For CODAR, we already are up to 30 sites,
and are continuing to gapfill. We historically budget $10 K/year for the operation of
each site. Setting this at 35 sites per year allows us to buy some badly needed
spares until we actually hit the 35 site number. We also have 3 CODAR technicians
funded, one northern, one central and one southern. There total allocation (salary,
fringe, overhead and travel) is $100 K each. We also have $50 K allocated for Hugh
as the regional coordinator. Total allocation for HF Radar observations is $700 K.
We then have the satellites, which must support the both the Rutgers and the UDel
facilities. This $100 K increment is evenly split between the two satellite receiving
sites. It includes technician salary, fringe, overhead, site licenses, & dish
maintenance.
Gliders look like CODAR, with a technician supported at each of the northern, central
and southern regions. Again, the $100 K increment includes salary, fringe, overhead
and travel. Our standard is 4 glider flights per year, 2 in the spring, 2 in the fall.
Glider flights are costed out at $50 K per flight. By the end of MARCOOS year 4, we
hope to have 2 IOOS gliders (one at UMass, one at UMaryland) plus the leveraged
Rutgers fleet.
3) DMAC Subsystem.
Here we round Eoin back up to the usual $200 K/year for the data management
work, and Igor back up to $100 K/year for the combined website. Eoin, as the
DMAC lead, has the historically most flexible budget, with some of the resources
going to ASA, Opendap, John Kerfoot or others as required for each year’s DMAC
activities. Putting our DMAC and Webpage activities in these categories, we hope to
free up some MACOORA money for the stakeholder liaison and extension person
prioritized by the MACOORA Board.
4) Modeling and Analysis Subsystem
Similar to the observing subsystem, maintaining what we already have, jut rounding
back up to the nearest $100 K, gives us $100 K/year for the STPS statistical model
and $100 K/year for each of the dynamical models. As with the other allocations,
the $100 K includes salary, fringe, overhead and travel.
5) Education & Outreach.
This subsystem is specifically called for in the RFP and is highly leveraged. I
rounded our existing MARCOOS education budget and the existing MARCOOS
outreach budget back up to $100 K each. Our E&O leads will decide on how best to
spend these allocations.
The total for maintaining the existing MACOORA and MARCOOS activities in the
combined MARACOOS comes to $2.8 M/year. This already exceeds the present
award total of $2.1 M/year, so we are already anticipating doing better than level
funding by rounding all of our existing categories back up to the nearest $100 K
level.
Moving on to Program Enhancements, these are costed out at a total of $1.2 M per
year and are based on the many operational needs identified in the MARCOOS
phone calls.
Primary is the need to respond to the call for CODAR spares and gapfilling. This is
put in at the level of $200 K per year, which covers the cost of 1 fully enabled long
range codar with gps timing, bistatic networking capabilities and the resilient shore
site (about $150 K) plus additional spare parts. We suspect that any initial systems
purchased may immediately be consumed as spares because of the high need.
Second is the need to build the glider fleet by purchasing more gliders and for
conducting more flights. $150 K purchases a new glider, or 3 additional flights.
Here I put $300 K/year as the place holder, with the exact distribution decided by
Oscar’s glider team.
I also added three $100 K increments for additional groups that may already have
gliders that can now contribute to the MARACOOS program.
Then we come to the woefully underfunded satellite and modeling programs. Here I
just gave each satellite and each modeling group an additional $50 K to use for
people or building resiliency, something we have heard many times.
Last is $100 K dedicated each year to new product development. One example is the
$100 K we cut from year 4 MARCOOS for the development of the nearshore wave
product for the rip current forecasters. Jay’s beach hazard report also could fit in
here. This is type of development could be something that was informed by the
stakeholder liaison and then prioritized by the MARACOOS board for development.
That brings us to a total of $1.2 M for enhancements, which when added to the $2.8
M for maintenance, gets us to $4 M annual request.
That’s the initial draft template. Comments are welcome. Any adjustments to the
template can be made on Tuesday after labor day. Then each lead person can
expand out how they see the template being applied each year. If the past is an
accurate indicator of the future, the main changes here may only be who Eoin needs
to help him with data management.