NASA Solicitation Enhanced Arctic Domain Operations

ENHANCED ARTIC DOMAIN OPERATIONS AND DECISION SUPPORT INFORMATION DISPLAY AND ANALYSIS CAPABILITIES FOR THE ARTIC COLLABORATIVE ENVIORNMENT PROJECT

Synopsis – Aug 21, 2015

General Information
Solicitation Number: NNM15563348R
Posted Date: Aug 21, 2015
FedBizOpps Posted Date: Aug 21, 2015
Recovery and Reinvestment Act Action: No
Original Response Date: N/A
Current Response Date: Sep 07, 2015
Classification Code: A — Research and Development
NAICS Code: 541712

Contracting Office Address

NASA/George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, Procurement Office, Marshall Space Flight Center, AL 35812

Description

NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has a requirement to conduct research, development and demonstrations of Enhanced Arctic Domain Science, Operations and Decision Support Information, Display and Analysis Capabilities for the Arctic Collaborative Environment (ACE) Project. ACE is a joint project between NASA MSFC and the Department of Defense (DOD) Office of the Secretary of Defense. This effort is to enhance awareness and understanding of the Artic environment, and will support research, resource management, situational awareness, decision support tools, climate studies and cooperative response to regional events and studies. This effort will address the ACE project research and development activities as follows: 1) provide appropriate multi discipline Arctic domain national and international subject matter expertise in the identification, validation and accessing of existing information content and in the development and accessing of new knowledge gap filling informational content for ACE; 2) establish sustainable regional, national and international technical and programmatic capabilities and arrangements for gaining ACE system access to general and unique specialized Arctic information content providers; 3) enhance the national and international collaborative sharing display functions and analysis functional capabilities of the ACE system for Arctic domain in particular for the unique nature of research and situational awareness activities in the Alaska region to include support of the Alaskan Command Common Operating Picture (COP) for disaster response and Search and Rescue (SAR) operations; 4) provide Arctic domain subject matter expert presentations and discussions on the informational content, capabilities and communities of interest user applications of the ACE system and; 5) define an approach for sustainment of the ACE system in providing Arctic domain information access to the national and international communities of interest supporting research, operations and decision systems.

NASA/MSFC intends to procure the requirement from the International Artic Research Center (IARC) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). Competition is impractical for the following reasons:

a. This is a follow-on procurement with IARC UAF that will enhance access to the Arctic domain general and unique science, operations, decision support information content with particular emphasis on the State of Alaska region. This will improve the collaborative sharing, display and analysis tool capabilities for the ACE system. Award to any other entity would result in duplication of technical and programmatic startup costs and time to NASA based upon the previous specialized support efforts by the IARC UAF for the ACE project and for the US Government.

b. These previous ACE projects with IARC UAF and some of the newly proposed ACE Project enhancement activities focusing on the Alaskan region are critical to the overall ACE project objectives and missions requirements addressing the situational awareness requirements of military and, federal and state of Alaska civilian government organizations responsible for Common Operating Picture (COP) data, models and system capabilities to meet the unique mission sets of U. S. Alaskan Command (ALCOM) for humanitarian and disaster response as well as the International Arctic Council sponsored U. S. State Department and US NORTHCOM NORAD led Search and Rescue activities to include the international Arctic Zephyr exercise being held in October 2015. The successful development and implementation of these efforts require significant understandings and operational familiarities with the Alaskan government and non-government stakeholders, nontraditional communities of knowledge in Alaska, and operational experience with the DoD operations in the environment and region of Alaska. The IARC at UAF has specific technical expertise and mature working relationships with all key participating federal, state and local Alaskan parties resulting in significant reductions in risk to the project in mission cost and time to provide ACE system support required for the DoD, NASA, DHS, Department of State and other non-federal stakeholder organizations. The UAF IARC’s unique current first-hand knowledge of the ACE project, organizational contacts, and a local comprehensive understanding of relevant critical organizations associated with the Alaska regional COP requirements are key to the cost effective and timely successful completion of these Alaskan regional task activities. The critical elements of these ACE R&D activities required for the DoD, DHS and International Arctic Council disaster response and search and rescue exercises will be held in late October 2015 and spring of 2016.

c. The IARC UAF is uniquely positioned as an Arctic domain institution to provide an array of research and development projects and to specifically continue to perform this comprehensive ACE effort on a timely basis as a result of the relevance of their worldwide recognized national and international Arctic mission, diverse scientific Arctic expertise, modeling development capabilities, field research expertise and strong connections with the Arctic domain communities of interest. The IARC serves as a focal point of excellence for US national and international collaboration and provides the Arctic research and operational communities with an unprecedented opportunity to share knowledge about science in the Arctic, with an emphasis on global change and situational awareness research. No single organization domestically or internationally has the uniquely comprehensive Arctic scientific expertise, strong operational network qualifications among the Arctic domain communities of interests and working technical and programmatic knowledge of the Arctic domain, in particular within Alaska, to meet the ACE project requirements to support a cost effective implementation and timely performance of the enhancements for both ACE research and operational demonstrations with major stakeholders. In addition, the IARC directly provides unique advanced computation development and enhancement of scientific and operational Arctic domain models, including climate analysis capabilities, enabling unique applications research and for their direct involvement with both international and national Arctic communities of interest for research and situational awareness. The IARC serves as a focal point of excellence for US national and international collaboration and provides the arctic research and operational communities with an unprecedented opportunity to share knowledge about science in the Arctic, with an emphasis on global change and situational awareness research. The IARC is singularly unique and unrivaled globally as a US National Institution.

The Government does not intend to acquire a commercial item using FAR Part 12.

Interested organizations may submit their capabilities and qualifications to perform the effort in writing to the identified point of contact not later than 4:30 p.m. local time on September 7, 2015. Such capabilities/qualifications will be evaluated solely for the purpose of determining whether or not to conduct this procurement on a competitive basis. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed effort on a full and open competition basis, based upon responses to this notice, is solely within the discretion of the government.

Oral communications are not acceptable in response to this notice.

All responsible sources may submit an offer which shall be considered by the agency.

NASA Clause 1852.215-84, Ombudsman, is applicable. The Center Ombudsman for this acquisition can be found at http://prod.nais.nasa.gov/pub/pub_library/Omb.html .

Point of Contact
Name: Sharrief A Alamin
Title: Contract Specialist
Phone: 256-961-7622
Fax:
Email: sharrief.a.alamin@nasa.gov

Name: Jennifer B. McCaghren
Title: Contracting Officer
Phone: 256-961-7454
Fax:
Email: jennifer.b.mccaghren@nasa.gov