  Given the very close proximity of their habitable zones, brown dwarfs
represent high-value targets in the search for nearby transiting habitable
planets that may be suitable for follow-up occultation spectroscopy. In this
paper we develop search strategies to find habitable planets transiting brown
dwarfs depending on their maximum habitable orbital period (PHZ out). Habitable
planets with PHZ out shorter than the useful duration of a night (e.g. 8-10
hrs) can be screened with 100 percent completeness from a single location and
in a single night (near-IR). More luminous brown dwarfs require continuous
monitoring for longer duration, e.g. from space or from a longitude-distributed
network (one test scheduling achieved - 3 telescopes, 13.5 contiguous hours).
Using a simulated survey of the 21 closest known brown dwarfs (within 7 pc) we
find that the probability of detecting at least one transiting habitable planet
is between 4.5 +5.6-1.4 and 56 +31-13 percent, depending on our assumptions. We
calculate that brown dwarfs within 5-10 pc are characterizable for potential
biosignatures with a 6.5 m space telescope using approx. 1 percent of a 5-year
mission's life-time spread over a contiguous segment only one fifth to one
tenth of this duration.
