Each site within the National Marine Sanctuary System conducts or facilitates characterization, monitoring, and research to protect the resources in the system. A series of questions are posed to all sanctuaries as a starting point for the creation of periodic condition reports that rate the status and trends of key resources, processes, and resource services provided. One way to determine how comprehensively we are conducting monitoring in a sanctuary, or gathering information for use in the condition reports, is to quantify the proportion of relevant questions and ecosystem services for which experts are able to provide ratings. The higher the proportion, the more adequate the monitoring program.

This measure tracks a range of contributions to address coastal community risk, vulnerability, and resilience to coastal hazards. It does this by using an index that incorporates a range of NOAA-sponsored activities, including training and technical assistance that communities have engaged in to mitigate their susceptibility to coastal hazards. This measure illuminates how NOAA is improving integration of its coastal programs and the Nation's capacity for end to end preparedness, response, recovery and resilience to hazards.

Cumulative number of R2X projects that include social science research and methods to address forecaster and end user needs to prepare for and respond to/ minimize societal impact for extreme weather events.

Volunteers are a critical part of national marine sanctuaries and help support science, education, and conservation priorities. Volunteers assist in many projects, such as citizen science, monitoring, education support, and marine debris cleanups. Volunteer hours can also be assigned a value through the widely used nonprofit organization, Independent Sector, which provides a yearly estimate of what a volunteer hour is worth. Using this number, each year ONMS calculates how much in-kind support our volunteers provide.

An important purpose of national marine sanctuaries is to ensure that the significant resources they protect provide benefits to the public. This performance measure is intended to track the extent to which marine sanctuaries benefit the public through the provision of “resource services”. Resource services include commonly defined “ecosystem services” as well as the services provided by archaeological resources. The measure uses status ratings from sanctuary condition reports to quantify the proportion of services rated as either “Good” or “Good/Fair,” both of which are considered acceptable levels of service potential.

Each site within the National Marine Sanctuary System conducts education through formal education, informal education, and outreach for education. Programming includes hands-on activities as well as distance learning. K-12 student participation is tracked in both formal and informal education programs by counting the number of students participating in these programs. Data is collected yearly from each site and headquarters and is summarized system wide. Using these methods we can track the number of K-12 students engaged in formal or informal education and stewardship programs.

For each reported flash flood event, the flash flood warning lead-time is the difference in minutes between the issuance of a flash flood warning and the onset of a geographically corresponding flash flood event. The lead times for all flash flood events, within the United States and territories served by the National Weather Service, are averaged to calculate the national average flash flood warning lead-time metric for a given fiscal year. This average includes all warned events with zero lead times and all unwarned events. Historically, flash flood warnings were issued and verified on a countywide basis. Starting in FY 2010, the storm-based warnings were implemented with verification based solely for the areas impacted by the warning and event.

NOAA is consolidating activities for the NAVSTA Newport, RI location. Currently NOAA has two ships homeported at NAVSTA, the Henry B. Bigelow and Okeanos Explorer. In order to remain in compliance with the CENOTE Act, NOAA is required to co-locate with the Navy whenever possible to increase technological sharing capabilities. This consolidation aligns with NOAA's regional facilities plans. The OMAO consolidation has milestones to complete design (FY22), and then FY23 issuance of an RFP and award of the contract.

Ensures that NOAA safely archives critical data and information according to National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) standards.

Ensures that NOAA provides real time (or near real time) availability of critical satellite data and products without gaps to users (NWS and other NOAA line offices, US military and operational partners). On time data and imagery provided increases timeliness and accuracy of public warnings and forecasts of climate and weather events.