About NGP RIDR

What We Are

The Northern Great Plains Regional Incubator for Drought Resiliency (NGP RIDR) is funded through the National Science Foundation Regional Resilience Innovation Incubator (R2I2) Program — a program focused on community-engaged, use-inspired solution development and the translation of Earth System Science to real-world deployment.

Phase I of NGP RIDR is a two-year, $500,000 award focused on concept development, ideation, and the alignment of people, data, methods, and decision contexts. A successful Phase I will result in a full proposal for a Phase II implementation award of up to $15 million over five years to deploy the system at scale across the five states of the Northern Great Plains.

Our Goal

To co-design a series of drought resilience solutions with users that modernize drought assessment using machine learning and mesonet observations within a nonstationary framework — explicitly addressing equity and capacity gaps in rural communities and Tribal Nations to enable long-term economic and institutional sustainability.

Our Vision

• Build a next-generation regional drought assessment and early warning framework for the Northern Great Plains.
• Serve as a regional pilot for a national, modern, climate-aware drought assessment approach that can scale to other regions.
• Shift drought assessment from outdated, stationary methods toward nonstationary, water-balance-based approaches.
• Improve equity, transparency, and trust in how drought information informs decisions, funding, and policy.

Why Now?

A rare convergence of factors makes this moment uniquely actionable:

Escalating drought variability. Flash droughts, rapid wet–dry swings, and shifting precipitation patterns are outpacing the tools used to assess them.

Major monitoring investments. Dense mesonet and soil moisture networks have been built across the region — but their data aren’t yet fully integrated into operational drought assessment.

Advances in science and technology. Machine learning, data fusion, and knowledge-guided modeling now make it possible to estimate total water balance components — soil moisture, groundwater, streamflow, evapotranspiration — at the resolution and speed operational decisions demand.

Persistent failures in coordination. Post-drought reviews (including the landmark 2017 Northern Plains drought) have documented consistent problems: inconsistent indicator selection, mismatched reference periods, fragmented communication, and decisions that locked in economic inequities. Errors in drought classification have real consequences — they determine eligibility for USDA programs, insurance payouts, and emergency declarations affecting billions of dollars.

Program Context

NGP RIDR is part of NSF’s R2I2 program, which is explicitly not a traditional research program. It funds the work of building systems: aligning stakeholders, developing governance, co-producing knowledge with users, and creating pathways from science to sustained operational practice.

Phase 1 is about getting it right before scaling — establishing the shared understanding, partnerships, and methodological foundations so that future drought assessment in the Northern Great Plains is more accurate, equitable, trusted, and actionable.