Sunday, December 16, 2007

What the Big Boss said...

I caught up with Mike E. at AGU and asked about the grant supplement to get LiDAR. Here's what I learned:

1. The proposal should be ~5 pgs and has no formal deadline.
2. We should wait till we hear the outcome of Rose's seed proposal, since that should (hopefully) be just a few weeks away, according to Josh R.
3. We should not ask for more than $50k.
4. We need to explain in detail why we want/need the LiDAR, of course (see my posting below). I briefly described three reasons to Mike that we've batted around before: to get the 3-D shape of the valley right for hydrodynamic modeling; to get the distribution of boulder sizes remotely by subtracting bare earth from first returns -- he liked that one, Jim -- and to characterize the wavelengths of mass movements that are impinging on the channel, as this will affect the scale of potential blockages and therefore probably flood character as well. He judged these to be reasonable justifications at first pass, but we will have to substantiate the case in detail. In particular, I think we really need to demonstrate the nature and magnitude of the improvement we get in the hydrodynamic modeling if we use LiDAR rather than the 10 m DEMs. Can we feasibly try this with the Deschutes LiDAR (which Jim has) as a demonstration? Rose, what say ye? If the effects are not great relative to other sources of uncertainty in the modeling, then I think our case is weakened significantly.

5. We need to explain WHY FUNDING FOR LIDAR WAS NOT INCLUDED IN THE ORIGINAL REQUEST. I want your input on this last matter in particular. Some of the reasons for the original omission, though perhaps ultimately the most truthful, are not going to sound very persuasive in a proposal (e.g., we thought it would inflate the budget too much, or we didn't realize how much damn work all the manual surveying would be, etc.). So, let's hear some wordsmithing. Ready, set, go.

1 comment:

  1. For the record, I shared the idea with Liz that one valid pragmatic explanation is that the change in Rose's position places us in a considerably better position for working with the data.

    Other Rationale Templates:
    1. Are there technological improvements or methodological improvements that make this look more promising than it did a few years ago?

    2. Similar...have there been any novel applications of the data that have been published recently?

    3. Has a member of the team become particularly proficient in dealing with LiDAR lately?

    4. The grim truth that we could never collect adequate data using conventional survey methods without re-focusing the project and enlisting many students. Even inn that scenario, we would be hard pressed to collect a lot of data.

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