THE
FACULTY
SENATE
Senate Document Number 3405S
Date of Senate Approval
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Statement
of Faculty Senate Action:
IDC 5: Proposal to President Broad for the
establishment of “The National Environmental
Modeling and
The name of the proposed center is: The National Environmental Modeling
and Analysis Center (NEMAC).
The Center conducts basic and applied environmental modeling
research and technology development. Through collaborations with academic,
governmental, commercial, and non-profit organizations, the Center provides
multi-factor analytical, visualization, and prediction capabilities to advance
public education, health, welfare, and the economy.
Goals and Objectives
The goals and objectives of NEMAC are as follows:
§
To become the preeminent working model of university,
government and private sector collaborative research; this will be accomplished
by:
i.
Initiating and maintaining an open dialogue with faculty and
student researchers, administrators, and staff from UNC Asheville and other
universities, government agencies, commercial businesses and non-profit
organizations;
ii.
Making collaborative research ventures the focal point of NEMAC’s efforts; and
iii.
Working with local, state, and federal officials to become an
integral component of the environmental modeling and economic development
planning process.
§
To promote faculty and undergraduate research and scholarship;
this will be accomplished by:
i.
Identifying faculty research interests and securing
appropriate funding;
ii.
Involving student research in each submitted research
proposal; and
iii.
Incorporating into proposals, when feasible, curriculum
development activities.
§
To stimulate economic development activities in the Western
Carolina Region; this will be accomplished by:
i.
Supporting the establishment of a climate information-based
industry through grant acquisition for collaborative research efforts;
ii.
Leveraging the desire of private- and public-sector leaders
in the region—which has lost over 4700 manufacturing jobs during the past 14
months—for sustainable employment opportunities; and
iii.
Hosting interdisciplinary workshops and symposia to increase
awareness of, and develop solutions for, the environmental and associated
economic needs of the region.
§
To remain financially self-sufficient and contribute to the
financial and scholastic welfare of UNC Asheville and the UNC system; this will
be accomplished by:
i.
Identifying and securing federal, state, and foundation
grants;
ii.
Commercializing/licensing applicable products developed by
NEMAC-managed consortia; and
iii.
Providing oversight activities for federal and state research
and student intern programs.
§
To Contribute to the well-being of the environment and
society in general; this will be accomplished by:
i.
Modeling environmental processes that impact human and
environmental health (e.g., air quality, storm water discharge, extreme
storms); and
ii.
Increasing the predictability of events and positively
affecting local, regional and state economies and the quality of life for all
individuals.
The relevance of NEMAC to the overall welfare of UNC Asheville will grow
as NEMAC’s expertise expands. NEMAC will become an integral part of UNC
Asheville; not only as a coordinator of research activities, but as a promoter
of faculty scholarship, undergraduate research and community involvement. Potential faculty and students will be drawn
to UNC Asheville because of the unique, interdisciplinary educational and
research opportunities provided by NEMAC.
UNC Asheville’s stature as an economic and social leader in the Western
Carolina Region will rise as its interaction with local, state and national
government and educational organizations increases. Collaboration with
non-profit and commercial businesses will increase as faculty and students
pursue NEMAC-related research. Their efforts
will create a positive wave of economic development and public improvement
activities across the region, including the establishment of knowledge-based
industries, enhanced human and environmental health, and increased safety of
the region’s populace.
Increased interaction with UNC-system (UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Chapel Hill,
UNC-Office of the President), governmental (National Climatic Data Center, US
Forest Service, USDA, DOE, NC Center for Geographic Information Analysis, NC
Dept. of Agriculture & Consumer Services), non-profit (Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, AdvantageWest, Education & Research
Consortium, Education & Research Services, Land-of-Sky Regional Council),
private sector (Baron Advanced Meteorological Systems), and community college
(Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College) institutions has already
occurred through collaborations on research, education and outreach
projects.
Instructional programs will be positively affected by the establishment
of NEMAC. Course offerings at UNC
Asheville will increase as the depth and breadth of NEMAC research endeavors
grow over time. NEMAC, through its
research offerings, will aid UNC Asheville in its recruitment of qualified
faculty and administrators. Their enthusiasm and knowledge will transfer to the
student body through enhanced course offerings and opportunities for
undergraduate research.
Actual results have mirrored these predictions. Through the planning, establishment and
implementation of NEMAC, interdepartmental (e.g., Math, Atmospheric Science,
Environmental Studies, Biology, Multimedia Arts and Sciences, Economics,
Physics, Chemistry, and Management) communications have significantly
increased. The number and diversity of
course offerings will increase through NEMAC-sponsored activities. Planned new courses to the UNC Asheville
curriculum include: Environmental Data Modeling, Geographic Information
Systems, Scientific Visualization, and Database Manipulation.
NEMAC is having a positive and significant impact on the Computer
Science Department. The NEMAC TIRAND
database system is being studied and discussed in Database and Analysis &
Design courses. The large scale of the database
(terabytes of data), the availability of design personnel and documents, and
the immediacy of the project combine to make this an ideal classroom case study
where computer science principles and practical, real-world aspects, freely
collide. Further enhancing this
important discipline is the NEMAC sponsored SIMVaC
grant to develop an advanced database course and a Databases For Everyone course. This will create opportunities for student
research in important database disciplines such as organization of large
databases, performance methodologies and tools, and data mining. Several Computer Science students are already
actively engaged in research projects sponsored by NEMAC.
The impact of NEMAC on instruction in the Atmospheric Sciences
Department is already being realized in the avenues of both research and
education. A private sector NEMAC
partner, Baron Advanced Meteorological Systems (BAMS), has agreed to install a
local radar site in the region, which will make the observations available to
the UNC Asheville Atmospheric Sciences Department. BAMS will also install visualization software
in several department computers. The agreement by BAMS to provide such hardware
and software will open new avenues for undergraduate research topics not
available to most of the universities having graduate atmospheric sciences
programs. The potential research will relate to observing and obtaining a
better understanding of weather circulation patterns unique to the local area
that have an important influence on precipitation and hydrology in western
North Carolina. Access to real-time radar observations coupled with the ability
to visualize the observations in the classroom will provide students with the
capability to learn how to use the radar for forecast purposes and how to
communicate information provided by the radar to a broadcast audience.
Another
direct impact of NEMAC on instruction in the UNC Asheville Atmospheric Sciences
Department is the recent acquisition of a multi-node Linux-based cluster for
high performance computing using atmospheric numerical models. This hardware
will support student undergraduate research projects focused on applying
computer weather models to local weather research issues so that operational
forecasters of local weather might be better equipped to issue highly accurate
and skilled forecasts. The Linux cluster is powerful enough to run computer
forecast models at very high resolutions so that the influence of local
small-scale circulations and topography can be taken into account in the model
evolution of weather systems. The multi-node nature of the cluster will allow
students at UNC Asheville to have the opportunity to learn about and gain
experience with computing in a Message Passing Interface (MPI) environment, the
direction toward which laboratories worldwide are moving for computational
physics research.
An
External Advisory Board (EAB) for NEMAC will be established soon after the
acceptance of this proposal. The EAB will provide guidance and feedback to the NEMAC Director and
Managers in order to ensure effectiveness of the Center in meeting its
commitments to key stakeholders. These
stakeholders include state and national scientific and academic communities,
western
The
initial EAB will be comprised of four individuals from among stakeholder
organizations whose names will be provided by NEMAC managers. Membership will increase to nine after a
fulltime Director is appointed. The
Director will, with input from the managers, designate five additional members
to the EAB.
The
EAB members will serve staggered, two-year terms. The EAB will convene twice
per year, at least one of which will be in person.
The administrative, academic and much of the research
and development components of NEMAC will reside at the
The administration of NEMAC—to be coordinated with
current UNC Asheville offices—will include:
·
Identification
of funding opportunities and the creation of research collaborations to pursue
them;
·
Grant proposal
submission; NEMAC, in conjunction with the UNC Asheville Office of Sponsored
Scholarship and Programs, will coordinate submission of proposals to funding
agencies;
·
Management of
periodic and final reports from research projects; this may include writing,
review, and/or submission of reports to funding agencies;
·
Management of
post-award activities, in conjunction with the UNC Asheville Controllers
Office;
·
Establishment
and coordination of the NEMAC External Advisory Board and its activities;
·
Oversight of NEMAC
daily activities, which may include: infrastructure support, personnel
management, equipment procurement, and project scheduling;
·
Expansion and
management of distance learning activities with other UNC institutions;
·
Recruitment and administration
of student, faculty, and staff researchers to work on NEMAC research projects;
·
Coordination of
NEMAC faculty and staff interactions with UNC Asheville regarding teaching
assignments, research space, collaboration agreements (when a researcher is
from outside UNC Asheville); and
·
Maintaining the
focus and productivity of a research project from proposal preparation through
project completion.
Finances required to operate NEMAC are those received by the Center
through external (non-UNC
Future funding will come from government, non-profit,
and private sector sources. The Center
cannot operate without external funding support. Therefore, it is necessary for NEMAC to
consistently identify and pursue funding opportunities. Without adequate external funding, UNC
Asheville may find it necessary to discontinue its role as host of NEMAC.
External funding will be sought from a variety of
sources. These include research and
education grants from federal funding agencies such as the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy, the Environmental
Protection Agency, NASA, the Department of Defense, and the National Science
Foundation. NEMAC will also seek funding from information product commercialization/licensing
activities.
Development
activities to be undertaken by NEMAC will include:
·
Encouragement of
research ideas from UNC Asheville faculty and staff;
·
Identification
of research solicitations from federal, state, and local funding agencies that
are pertinent to the NEMAC mission;
·
Guidance of
research toward projects which, in time, have the potential for
commercialization;
·
Providing
advice/review services for faculty/staff prior to proposal submission;
·
Identification
of appropriate researchers from UNC Asheville, other universities, government
agencies and national laboratories (including undergraduate and graduate
students);
·
Creation of
research consortia from the various universities, agencies and laboratories
across the
·
Dissemination of
press releases describing NEMAC research and potential products and
distribution of these to scientific/industry/government groups; and
·
Coordination of
the presentation of NEMAC-related research at professional conferences and
workshops.
Current and outyear NEMAC
planning budgets are included in Table 1.
As listed in Table 1, federal earmarks are those funds set aside by a
funding agency for a specific research purpose (e.g., Development of the TIRAND
project through the Library of Congress).
Grants are funds given to NEMAC by a funding agency, via a contract, to
conduct a specific task deemed important to the mission of that agency. Contracts are agreements to conduct a
specific scope of work—resulting in a deliverable(s)—for a funding agency in exchange
for monetary compensation to NEMAC.
Funds from the State of North Carolina reflect additions to the state
budget (above and beyond those funds now forwarded to UNC Asheville) to support
NEMAC personnel and activities. These amounts reflect the Expansion Budget
request that the UNC Board of Governors sent to the Legislature. Leases from
intellectual property (IP) are those fees returning to NEMAC (and UNC
Asheville) for the use of products developed during NEMAC-sponsored research
activities.
Table
1. NEMAC Planning Budget
|
Revenues |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
|
Federal Earmarks |
$900,000 |
$900,000 |
$1,000,000 |
$500,000 |
$0 |
|
Grants and Contracts |
$600,000 |
$900,000 |
$1,200,000 |
$1,600,000 |
$2,000,000 |
|
State of |
$0 |
$250,000 |
$500,000 |
$500,000 |
$500,000 |
|
Leases from IP* |
$0 |
$250,000 |
$500,000 |
$750,000 |
$1,000,000 |
|
TOTAL |
$1,500,000 |
$2,300,000 |
$3,200,000 |
$3,350,000 |
$3,500,000 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Expenditures |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
|
Operations |
$245,000 |
$500,000 |
$750,000 |
$800,000 |
$850,000 |
|
Programs |
$595,000 |
$1,120,000 |
$1,750,000 |
$2,125,000 |
$2,500,000 |
|
Subcontracts |
$595,000 |
$600,000 |
$600,000 |
$300,000 |
$0 |
|
Undergraduates** |
$65,000 |
$80,000 |
$100,000 |
$125,000 |
$150,000 |
|
TOTAL |
$1,500,000 |
$2,300,000 |
$3,200,000 |
$3,350,000 |
$3,500,000 |
*IP = Intellectual property; ** Funds for undergraduate researchers
are stipends;
Listed in Table 1 under expenditures are
operations, programs, subcontracts, and undergraduates. Operational expenditures are those costs, or charges,
that are incurred during the conduct of daily activities at NEMAC (e.g.,
telephone, copying, printing, etc.).
Program costs are those resulting from the administration of the
specific research projects carried out by NEMAC-related faculty. Subcontracts represent agreements with
outside entities for work that is required under a contract over which NEMAC is
the prime administrator. Undergraduate
funds are stipends released to undergraduate students participating in
NEMAC-related research projects.
New computer hardware will be required for a new and unique
high-performance computing resource focused on applied data visualization. A
Federal Agenda proposal has been submitted to support the new Visualization
Computing GRID (VisualGRID) computer hardware
requirements.
In
addition, computer hardware purchases will be required in support of a proposed
ability to transform archival data into a form suitable for environmental
research, modeling and analysis projects. A Federal Agenda proposal has been
submitted in support of the establishment of NEMAC as a National Data Resource
(NDR).
Avenues
are currently being pursued to finance the installation of a
local radar in the region that will be devoted to studying local
environmental problems and to providing early guidance for averting local
natural disasters such as flash flooding.
As
has been demonstrated to date, NEMAC finances the capital needs of its research
entirely through funded research proposals. It is the intent that this
commitment will continue through future projects as described previously in the
VisualGRID and NDR summaries. NEMAC will not compete
for funding with UNC Asheville department requests covering purchases and
requisitions.
UNC
Asheville has provided office and computer laboratory space for the initial
phases of NEMAC's operation. This includes Rhoades 201, which has been
renovated for office space. Rhoades 201 houses the administrative section of
NEMAC, including the Director of Development and Program Assistant, Research
Fellow (Tom Burnet), and space for NEMAC faculty researchers to meet and work
with collaborators. In addition, some collaborators use the space in their own
departments. This in-kind support has
proven invaluable to faculty, staff and student researchers, and has afforded
them the opportunity to pursue the goals and objectives of the Center. Two
other rooms, which are in need of renovation, Rhoades 207A and 205 are also used by NEMAC. These require renovation into
more efficient space in anticipation of a director and expanding research
activities (e.g, computer visualization center,
high-speed connective node to the Western Carolina Fiber Optic Network). These
efforts will require external sources of funding.
Collaborations
NEMAC’s strength is in its
ability to create partnerships. The success of NEMAC is dependent on the
collaboration of academic, governmental, non-profit, and commercial
organizations. Together these groups can
provide the scientific, computer and statistical expertise to prepare and
analyze disparate databases (e.g., historical climate records and
depth-to-water table data), as well as provide environmentally-related products
for a variety of governmental agencies and industries including: agriculture,
health, insurance, transportation, and energy.
Current
UNC Asheville/NEMAC collaborators include:
NEMAC
is having a profound impact on undergraduate research at UNC Asheville. To this point, NEMAC has secured over $60,000
for undergraduate research activities at UNC Asheville. This is distributed as stipends to
undergraduate researchers working on faculty-supervised research projects.
Through its grant writing activities, NEMAC serves as a model for providing
undergraduate research opportunities on all grant-funded, Center-related
research projects. Recent, current and
future undergraduate research activities include: Geographic Information Systems,
numerical modeling in the Atmospheric Sciences, scientific visualization, and
chaotic behavior of weather systems.
Opportunities for faculty scholarship, on and off the UNC Asheville
campus, are greatly enhanced due to NEMAC.
Faculty from a number of departments on the UNC Asheville campus (e.g.,
Math, Management, Environmental Studies, Computer Science, and Multimedia Arts
& Sciences) already are actively involved in NEMAC research projects. NEMAC
will operate as an information center regarding funding and collaborative
opportunities for joint research efforts. In this manner, NEMAC will assist
faculty and staff in pursuit of research opportunities and can provide
coordination of proposal preparation, submission, and post-award project management.
Economic Development
NEMAC positively impacts economic development in Western
North Carolina (WNC) and beyond. In the short run, students on projects are
well prepared to contribute—post-graduation—as new employees to regional
employers such as NCDC, BAMS, Duke Energy, Progress Energy, USDA Forest
Service, and others engaged in delivery of knowledge-based services. Those
graduates with these interests will be more likely to be employable in the
region rather than having to move away to find professional employment.
In the mid-term, NEMAC’s focus on
developing better micro and meso-scale modeling,
analysis, and visualization will lead to improved prediction capabilities and
public policy requirements with enormous economic development implications for
citizens, communities, existing companies, and entrepreneurial initiatives to
form new companies. By way of specific examples, NEMAC research will yield:
·
Better weather forecasts that impact challenging regions such
as WNC and the broader
·
Better smoke and haze forecasts that have emergency and
chronic health implications;
·
Better hydrological forecasts affecting local flood
prediction, flood water management and protection of clean water supplies;
·
Better emergency forecasts for impending local disruptions to
power generation and distribution systems; and
·
Better urbanization land use planning particularly as it
affects local potable water demands and flood water management.
Each
NEMAC project is a multi-disciplinary effort. For instance, the recently
awarded UNC-Office of the President grant for computer-related research that
was awarded to UNC Asheville included six departments (Computer Science,
Multimedia Arts & Sciences, Mathematics, Environmental Studies, Management,
NEMAC) on the UNC Asheville campus plus collaborators
at AB Tech and UNC-Charlotte. By
pursuing this type of project, NEMAC creates an atmosphere of cooperation and
leverages resources across departmental (and campus) boundaries.
One of NEMAC’s missions is the transfer of
sponsored and developed technologies to the market to generate benefits for the
University, the community, and the public.
Technical transfer to the community broadly includes invention disclosures,
patents, license agreements, new business startups, and license revenues. NEMAC
is an integrator of research and technology involving environmental modeling
and analysis, and as such, is helping to transfer new capability and results
into practical applications. NEMAC
collaborations with industry, government, and academic institutions increase
the likelihood that new inventions and discoveries will lead to useful products
and services that benefit society. The end result is more career options for our
graduates, more research options for our faculty, and more commercialization
options for our technologies.
Decision-makers
and researchers in a number of important environmental disciplines need
improved information and tools. This year,
through valuable business and community partners, NEMAC sponsorship will result
in an innovative, on-line radar data database and query system for researchers
and the public. This project involves
industry and university faculty engaged in close partnership to advance the
quality and timeliness of archival and real-time weather data and derived
weather products. In addition, this
project is seen to have significant commercial potential and thus further
benefit to the University.