Observing Facilities Assessment Panel

The Observing Facilities Assessment Panel (OFAP) is an NCAR-driven community process that provides technical and operational assessment of requests associated with the use of NSF’s Lower Atmospheric Observing Facilities (LAOF).  It is EOL's responsibility to coordinate all aspects related to requesting LAOF facilities among principal investigators, facility providers, panel members, NSF and EOL staff including the preparation of  feasibilities of and cost estimates for NSF-funded field projects (also called "Deployments").

The panel, which is composed of a diverse pool of scientists with broad-based experience in observational studies of earth system sciences, meets bi-annually at NCAR to provide valuable feedback and evaluation to facility managers and the user community concerning experiment design, the appropriate and efficient use of NSF resources as related to a specific field campaign, technical and operational challenges as well as data management strategies. The comments and technical evaluation presented by the OFAP, together with feasibility analyses and cost estimates provided by facility managers, are taken into consideration before a final decision is made by individual NSF program officers whether to fund a project.