Description
BACKGROUND The National Weather Service (NWS) National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) is composed of nine National Centers. (1) The Aviation Weather Center (AWC) (2) The Climate Prediction Center (CPC) (3) The Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) (4) The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC) (5) The NCEP Central Operations (NCO) (6) The Ocean Prediction Center (OPC) (7) The Tropical Prediction Center (TPC) (8) The Space Environment Center (SEC) (9) The Storm Prediction Center (SPC). The core mission of NCEP is to provide weather analysis, forecasts, and warnings involving a wide range of atmospheric systems affecting the United States and the surrounding oceans. NCEP contains as many as four Service Centers (AWC, SPC, TPC, HPC) that require access to real-time radar data sets to perform their respective missions, specifically, using data from the Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) network nationwide. Currently, WSR-88D data is available within the NCEP Service Centers by means of a vendor (i.e. formerly known as a NIDS provider). The radar data is displayed using National - Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (N-AWIPS) software after the radar data is retrieved from the vendor’s server located at each of the Service Centers. Radar data is also displayed using a vendor stand-alone workstation, accessing the vendor server on site, capable of acquiring and displaying WSR-88D data from one site or nationally using a composite national mosaic data product created by the vendor. NCEP Service Centers must have the ability to acquire and display, simultaneously, real-time data from all WSR-88Ds. A critical requirement of the NCEP Service Centers is to be able to access in real time national radar mosaic products. NCEP meteorologists perform a more complete 'meteorological watch' using the many radars and National Mosaic products provided in real-time under the existing NCEP radar contract. The new NCEP radar contract will continue to provide the necessary remote sensing tools that are invaluable to the NCEP scientists in support of NCEP's mission to protect life and property. OBJECTIVE The objective of this contract is three fold. Some objectives are optional, specifically C.1 and D.1 below, and may be executed by the Government if available from the vendor. A. To supply a system at each participating Center capable of acquiring two types of real-time radar data: (1) National-scale, high resolution radar mosaics. (2) WSR-88D Product Data collected from the Radar Product Central Collection Dissemination Service (RPCCDS) / NOAAPORT B. To make the following types of radar data available to Government systems at each participating National Center. (1) National-scale, high resolution radar mosaics. (2) WSR-88D Product Data collected from the Radar Product Central Collection Dissemination Service (RPCCDS) / NOAAPORT optional: C. To supply a system (that may be the same system as listed in objective "A") at each participating Center capable of acquiring real-time WSR-88D level-II radar data and to make the data available to Government systems. (1) National-scale, high resolution radar level-II mosaics. optional: D. If the supplied system at each participating Center utilizes a satellite ingest dish. (1) On a per-center basis a satellite dish de-icer. (2) Dish shall be appropriately sized for latitude and climatology. The Government will be responsible for the storage and display of the data furnished by the contractor on operational workstations. In the contractor's proposal electronic examples of radar mosaics and single site data along with documentation on decoding the electronic data formats shall be provided. THE RADAR DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM SPECIFICATION The contractor shall supply: A. A 24-hour per day customer support department to solve data acquisition, software and hardware problems with a 2-hour (support personnel) response time. A fully capable support staff providing responsive assistance to Government personnel in an event of data quality problems, data flow problems, or other questions about data formats, etc., that may arise. B. A system that will be very reliable providing data (i.e. 99.9% data availability per year). The high uptime (i.e. 99.9%) is required to ensure that data is available during significant weather events (e.g. land falling hurricanes, severe weather outbreaks such as May 3, 1999, November 15, 2005). The offeror needs to demonstrate its system design to satisfy this requirement. The offeror needs to describe its design safety factor and how these service levels are derived. A description of the offerors worst-case scenario and their contingencies/responses, and what the government’s responsibilities are in these events should be given. The description should include both the system/s located at the government facilities, communications systems, systems at the offerors facilities, and how the offeror obtains radar data. In the event of a system failure at a Government site, it should be able to be quickly repaired, on site, with Government technicians swapping components until the problem is solved. If the primary data acquisition source is down (e.g. satellite data ingest at a Government site), a backup data acquisition source shall be functional and available to Government personnel to activate in an event of a primary data source outage of greater than 30 minutes. This activation may involve Government computers accessing a contractor’s server (e.g. FTP over the Internet) at the contractor’s site. Note, the above service level of data availability does not apply to level-II radar data since the level-II radar data is not yet disseminated over an operational system. The system at the Government site should have built-in scripts in place to access the contractor’s servers during a backup mode. For example, to obtain data if a satellite is not available or the local satellite dish is damaged and not allowing the signal to be received. The system at the Government sites shall provide dual copper gigabit Ethernet interfaces ( 1000 BaseT) for Government Local Area Network (LAN) / Private LAN connection. The system at the Government sites shall provide Network File System (NFS) version 3 and http access to allow Government computers access to the system to obtain radar data. The offer should include an example report on how the contractor measures data/service availability. The contractor shall provide quarterly reports on data/service availability to the COTR during the life of the contract. The contractor should certify and approve within 72 hours (beginning during regularly scheduled business hours) all vendor operating system patches and distribute any contractor updates within the same time period to the Government sites and designated Government contacts. This includes testing and ensuring patches do not degrade the performance of the system. The patch information will also be provided to/through the Contracting Officers Technical Representative (COTR) and to Government personnel at each site involved with information security who requests such data. Data Availability: A system capable of acquiring: -ALL standard, unaltered WSR-88D Product Data in real time -high resolution, national-scale mosaics of reflectivity and other value-added mosaics. The offeror needs to document how long it takes (i.e. delay) radar data to flow through the contractor’s entire system until it is available for display and use at a Government Service Center, as well as how long the system takes to generate the various mosaic images and the timeliness of the mosaic images. E. An application display on a contractor computer system will allow a forecaster to select products from WSR-88D sites, or mosaics, stored on the contractors server system (e.g. contractor user application software). A display will allow a forecaster to select the WSR-88D sites or products to be acquired by the system. F. A system that is capable of acting as a server for making acquired data sets available to Government systems via each Center's Local Area Network (LAN) utilizing TCP/IP protocol (Ethernet). G. The ability of a system to provide real time Product Arrival Notification (e.g. event driven notification system) over the TCP/IP Local Area Network (e.g. port) to facilitate the timely distribution of radar data to other Government systems. H. Two (2) complete sets of operational manuals available at each site. Manuals shall specify all setup functions necessary to operate the system, and any routine procedures required by the system. Manuals shall include trouble-shooting procedures to speed up solutions to common problems. Operational manuals shall include basic theory of operations, program logic flow, file structure descriptions, program documentation, development procedures and trouble shooting procedures. Documentation on the system shall also include a block diagram of the hardware involved (e.g. from a feed horn all the way to the workstation). The information shall also include all frequencies from the RF (i.e. Radio Frequency) side down to the IF (i.e. Intermediate Frequency). RADAR DATA REQUIREMENT SPECIFICATIONS A. The Contractor shall supply a wide variety of mosaic reflectivity data products to participating Centers. Three different geographical mosaic areas are required: a mosaic of radar imagery across the lower 48 contiguous United States, a mosaic of radar imagery across Hawaii, and a mosaic of radar imagery across Alaska. B. Other required WSR-88D National Composite Mosaic Products shall include the following, again three different geographical mosaic areas are required (lower 48 states, Hawaii, and Alaska) C. The contractor shall supply unaltered WSR-88D product data to participating Centers with the following specifications when WSR-88D units are in Precipitation Mode. Note, WMO HEADER and RPG HEADER are listed for each product below.