Broad Agency Announcement - Development and Demonstration of Mine Safety and Health Technology

The goal of this solicitation is to accelerate the development, adaptation, evaluation, demonstration, and adoption of innovative technologies that improve the safety and health of mine workers across coal, metal, nonmetal, stone, sand, and gravel mining operations. NIOSH seeks applied research and technology-development efforts that have a credible pathway toward practical implementation in surface or underground mines. Of particular interest are projects that: 1) Advance promising prototype technologies toward mine-ready solutions, including final development, adaptation to challenging mining environments, modification to meet applicable permissibility requirements, and demonstration at mine sites. 2) Adapt technologies successfully used in other industries for mining applications, including necessary redesign, ruggedization, integration, permissibility modifications, performance evaluation, and in-mine demonstration. 3) Evaluate emerging or candidate technologies to determine their potential to improve mine worker safety and health, identify technical or operational barriers to implementation, and develop approaches for overcoming those barriers. 4) Facilitate adoption of mature safety and health technologies that are available but have not achieved widespread mining-industry implementation. Activities may include establishing initial operational capability through mine demonstrations, evaluating technology performance and usability, identifying barriers to adoption, and determining modifications needed for practical industry acceptance. 5) Conduct analyses that identify emerging hazards and future technology needs, including analysis of safety, health, injury, fatality, exposure, surveillance, operational, or other relevant data to inform future research and technology-development priorities.