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FBO DAILY ISSUE OF APRIL 17, 2003 FBO #0503
SOURCES SOUGHT

A -- FORECASTING AND MODELING STUDIES AND SERVICES PROGRAM RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT ANNOUNCEMENT (PRDA) PART 1 OF 2

Notice Date
4/15/2003
 
Notice Type
Sources Sought
 
Contracting Office
Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command, Electronics Systems Center/Battle Management Command and Control Capabilities, ESC/AC, 50 Griffiss St, Hanscom AFB, MA 01731
 
ZIP Code
01731
 
Solicitation Number
PRDA ESC/ACW-03-01
 
Response Due
5/29/2003
 
Archive Date
8/29/2003
 
Point of Contact
Barbara Lawrence, Contracting Officer, ESC/ACK, 50 Griffiss St, Hanscom AFB, MA, 01731. Phone: 781-271-8075, Fax: 781-271-2882, Email: barbara.lawrence@ hanscom.af.mil.
 
E-Mail Address
Click Here to E-mail the POC
(barbara.lawrence@hanscom.af.mil)
 
Description
This PRDA is posted in two parts. This first part contains contact information, background, the program description, technical goals and technical approach. The second part, posted separately, contains contact information, the basis for award, deliverables, and proposal preparation instructions. CONTACTS: Ms Carol Lundin, ESC/ACW, Program Manager, carol.lundin@hanscom.af.mil, 781-271-8495, Capt Gregory Craff, ESC/ACW, Project Manager, gregory.craff@hanscom.af.mil, 781-271-3437, and Ms Barbara Lawrence, ESC/ACK, Contracting Officer, barbara.lawrence@hanscom.af.mil, 781-271-8075, representing the Air Force Weather Weapon System, Electronic Systems Center, located at Hanscom Air Force Base, are soliciting proposals for new and innovative solutions in weather model algorithms, weather analysis algorithms and meteorological satellite data ingest. This is a single-step, 45-day, Program Research and Development Announcement (PRDA) to solicit research and development proposals for the Forecasting and Modeling program. BACKGROUND The Air Force Weather Agency is the premiere source of weather intelligence for the US Air Force, US Army, Department of Commerce, Special Operations Forces and NATO/Coalition forces. As such, AFWA is continuously making efforts to improve the operational production of weather information. AFWA employs a team of scientists who are constantly striving to assess the performance of existing weather forecasting and analysis tools and techniques. These experts also identify areas of improvement that will substantially improve the quality of the forecast products and their utility to the war fighter. AFWA has identified the following areas for improvement to be funded in Fiscal Year 2003 with the aim of improving or streamlining weather forecasting and analysis: - Agricultural Meteorology Model (AGRMET) resolution improvement - Interactive Tuning Tool (ITT) for cloud analysis from satellite imagery - Meteosat Second Generation data stream ingest algorithms - Nephanalysis algorithms - Television Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) data stream ingest algorithms - Optimization of current Mesoscale Model 5/Weather Research and Forecasting (MM5/WRF) weather models - Research into the 4DVAR model initialization scheme for MM5/WRF - Algorithms to fuse Special Sensor data into the WRF Model PROGRAM DESCRIPTION This solicitation is open only to academic institutions or companies headquartered within the United States of America. This effort shall not use or produce any classified information. This effort will have funding for a performance period of a year or less. As this is the first of potentially many related contractual efforts on the behalf of the Air Force Weather Agency, the vast majority of the technical output from this effort must be non-proprietary. This must be done to ensure that what is learned in this contractual effort may be freely utilized by the Air Force to advance the technical base of the Forecasting and Modeling Program, and to advance the state-of-the-art of weather modeling, analysis and data ingest in general. Outputs may be used by the Government to guide future contractual efforts, including contracts with other vendors. The use of Internal Research and Development funding (IR&D) is invited, but not required, for consideration of award. If IR&D is proposed, the proposal must clearly specify which portions of the resultant intellectual property and technical output from the proposed effort will be the direct result of funding from this contract versus IR&D. Proposals that include IR&D but do not clearly make this distinction will not be considered for award. As stated above, the vast majority of what is proposed as output from this contract must be made available to ESC and AFWA on a non-proprietary basis. TECHNICAL GOALS The goal of this effort is to advance the state of the art in operational weather forecasting. There are two primary thrusts: advancing the sophistication of weather modeling; developing new data ingest algorithms and analysis tools. The individual technical goals of this solicitation are as follows: Increase the resolution (48km grid to 24km grid) of the AGRMET model and make operational. Speed up the cloud analysis tuning process with an interactive Graphical User Interface (GUI) tool. Expand the existing data ingest capability to handle the new format of the second generation Meteosat satellite, and integrate the data into the existing analysis tools. Create the capability to "now-cast" a nephanalysis in areas of low satellite coverage and make operational. Expand the existing data ingest capability to handle data from the TIROS constellation, and integrate the data into the existing analysis tools. Optimize the MM5 weather model, reducing the computational requirements by 10% to 15%. Establish the foundation of knowledge necessary to develop a unified 3/4D-VAR model initialization system. Improve boundary layer physics in the WRF weather model. Integrate special sensor microwave data into the WRF weather model. Contractors will be expected to conduct a mid-term program review for any task with a period of performance longer than three months. This review may be presented in person at either a Government facility or contractor facility, or may be presented remotely via teleconference or video-teleconference, depending on the scope and needs of the task. In any task where the contractor is expected to provide support to AFWA to install software on development or production systems, the contractor shall propose a level of service appropriate to the complexity of the installation. The support shall not exceed that of one on-site contractor for the term of each installation procedure. The support shall not be less than telephone or email support during normal working hours during the term of the installation procedure with a response time of one working day or less. Any requested Government furnished information required to accomplish a task will be provided upon contract award, if available. TECHNICAL APPROACH Each area of improvement identified above has a unique set of expectations: TASK 1: For the AGRMET upgrade task, a three-stage program is suggested to baseline, modify the existing operational model and validate the results. Firstly, the contractor should acquire the existing operational software from AFWA, analyze the algorithms and code, establish the required inputs and outputs, develop a baseline test data set (consisting of up to 6 hemispheric data sets), and run the code in a test environment and confirm results duplicate those produced at AFWA given the same inputs. The outputs for the current eighth-mesh results will also be baselined. Secondly, the contractor should modify the GFP software to run on 16th mesh grid and produce 16th mesh output products. The contractor should exploit higher resolution input data where it exists and ensure that constraints of the model physics are not exceeded. All software should be maintained under Concurrent Versioning System (CVS) configuration control, and software changes documented, in accordance with ISO9000 procedures (if in place). The contractor should run the modified software in the contractor's test environment using the baselined test data sets and verify that the 16th mesh results are consistent with the baseline 8th mesh products. Following successful testing by the contractor, the contractor should work with AFWA to install software on the applicable AFWA development system. Lastly, following successful installation on the applicable AFWA development system, the contractor should test to verify compatibility/integration with the desired AFWA production system. TASK 2: For the Interactive Tuning Tool (ITT) task, the ITT should visualize the result of threshold variable changes in near real-time (less than a minute) using a graphical user interface (GUI). The contractor should review the existing tuning procedures and become familiar with the existing tools in order to understand the tuning process. Specific ITT design elements will require the contractor to interact with AFWA/DNXM to determine the operation of the tool. All software will be maintained under CVS configuration control, and software changes documented, in accordance with ISO9000 procedures (if in place). The contractor should run the modified software in the contractor's test environment using test data sets provided by AFWA/DNXM. Following successful testing by the contractor, the contractor should work with AFWA/DNXM to install and verify compatibility/integration of the ITT software with the Cloud Depiction and Forecast System (CDFS-II). TASK 3: For the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) task, the contractor should develop algorithms to take advantage of the multi-spectral capabilities of MSG. A three-stage program is suggested. First, the contractor should acquire the existing Support to Environmental Requirements for Cloud Analysis and Archive (SERCAA) cloud algorithms documented in AFWA's Algorithm Description Document (ADD) in order to determine which algorithms may be modified to exploit new capabilities of MSG. Following successful testing by the contractor, the contractor should work with AFWA to install software on the applicable AFWA development system. Secondly, the contractor should develop new algorithms that exploit emerging capabilities (particularly the multi-spectral feature) that are delivered with the launch of MSG, code the algorithms using C or C++ programming language, then baseline the algorithms/code. Following successful testing by the contractor, the contractor should work with AFWA to install software on the applicable AFWA development system. Thirdly, following successful installation on the applicable AFWA development system, the contractor should test to verify compatibility/integration with the production system, Cloud Depiction and Forecast System (CDFS-II). TASK 4: For the Nephanalysis algorithms task, the contractor should develop algorithms to make a "now-cast" predictive nephanalysis in areas of low satellite coverage based on the previously generated nephanalysis. A three-stage program is suggested. Firstly, the contractor should acquire the existing operational cloud forecast software from AFWA, establish the required inputs and outputs, develop the appropriate advection algorithms, develop a baseline test data set (consisting of up to 6 hemispheric data sets), run the code in a test environment and confirm duplicate results can be produced at AFWA given the same inputs. The outputs for the current nephanalysis results should also be baselined. These outputs should establish the regression test data set to be used in the next stage to verify correct implementation of the changes. Secondly, the contractor should baseline the algorithms/code. Following successful testing by the contractor, the contractor should work with AFWA to install software on the applicable AFWA development system. Thirdly, following successful installation on the applicable AFWA development system, the contractor should perform tests to verify compatibility/integration with the desired AFWA production system. TASK 5: For the TIROS data stream task, the contractor should analyze a series of problem reports that are preventing TIROS satellite data from being handled, solve the problems, then develop the ingest algorithms for the TIROS data. A three-stage program is suggested. Firstly, after reviewing all open problem reports and write-ups related to this issue for the CDFS-II system, the contractor should analyze the algorithms and code to determine the cause of the errors. The contractor should provide the Government with a report that summarizes the error analysis. Secondly, the contractor should modify the software to ingest the data from the TIROS constellation and produce cloud analysis output consistent with the guidelines set forth in the CDFS-II documentation. These analyses should be merged with those currently generated from data output by the geostationary and Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellite constellations. The modified software should be tested by the contractor for compliance with the CDFS-II documentation in the AFWA development environment. Thirdly, upon successful completion of testing of the modified software, the contractor should install it on the production system to be used operationally. TASK 6: For the MM5/WRF optimization task, the contractor should apply sound computer science principles to existing MM5/WRF weather model code in order to reduce computational requirements without invalidating the soundness of the weather model. The contractor will work in conjunction with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The pre-identified areas for improvement are: Microphysics; Radiation physics (long-wave; short-wave); Boundary-Layer physics; SOUND for MM5; SOLVE; Convective clouds; Parallel overhead; AFWA-MM5 pre- and post-processors. The contractor may identify other critical areas for improvement to the Government for consideration. The overall target benchmark improvement for this project is on the order of 10-15%. A five-stage program is suggested to implement this task, with each phase producing a deliverable product. Firstly, the contractor shall develop and deliver a plan detailing exactly what routines to review, methods of testing and verification, and a migration strategy for transferring the improvements into operations at AFWA and into the baseline MM5 at NCAR. The plan should include a cost/benefit analysis of the expected improvements compared to the AFWA operational configuration. Secondly, the contractor should optimize MM5 modules/schemes presently in operational use by AFWA and fully document all altered code. The contractor should periodically update the cost/benefit analysis to reflect the actual performance of modified code. Specific AFWA-MM5 theaters that do not meet the target benchmark improvement metrics should be further analyzed and documented. Thirdly, the contractor should optimize MM5 modules/schemes targeted for future operational implementation by AFWA. Fourthly, the contractor should port/integrate optimized modules/schemes common to MM5 and WRF into the WRF modeling system. Finally, the contractor should optimize any remaining WRF modules/schemes targeted for future operational use by AFWA. Contractor personnel should travel to AFWA (Omaha, Nebraska) at the beginning of the contract for an on-site orientation. Travel to NCAR to conduct final code reviews, validation and verification should be conducted prior to completion of any set of phased deliverables. A list of modules/schemes that are in use or planned for future use is available from the Original Point of Contact (identified below) to any offerors wishing to propose against this task. The modules/schemes are available from http://box.mmm.ucar.edu/mm5/ and http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/user_main.html TASK 7: For the 4DVAR model initialization scheme, the contractor should perform research to advance the state of the art of the 4DVAR. The contractor will work with the National Center for Atmospheric Research to set the foundation for development of unified WRF 3/4DVAR system, with the aim of such a system being operational in the FY04 to FY06 time frame. The contractor should conduct research and deliver studies on the following topics: Major changes to WRF framework/3DVAR code required to permit unified 3/4DVAR system; Initial results of applying the "TAF" automatic adjoint compiler to selected WRF algorithms; Cost-benefit study of MM5-4DVAR run in both "full-fields" and "incremental" mode. TASK 8: For the MM5/Special Sensor data task, the contractor should perform research to advance the state of the art in weather models and the integration of satellite data into those models. The contractor should develop algorithms to integrate Special Sensor Microwave (SSM/1, SSM/T1, and SSM/T2) data into the WRF/3DVAR system. The contractor should produce the following two technical reports: a detailed report of the instrument characteristics of special sensor microwave instruments, and a detailed report comparing two alternatives for utilizing data from these instruments. The contractor should also implement software for improving WRF physics in the areas of the boundary layer physics and cumulus parameterization. The contractor should provide support to AFWA to integrate the special sensor data algorithms and WRF physics code into AFWA's development and operational systems.
 
Web Link
ESC Business Opportunities Web Page
(http://www.eps.gov/spg/USAF/AFMC/ESC/PRDA ESC/ACW-03-01/listing.html)
 
Record
SN00304612-F 20030417/030415221935 (fbodaily.com)
 
Source
FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

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