Description
The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Eastern Region Acquisitions Division-Kansas City office intends to award, on a sole source basis, under the authority of FAR 13.106-1(b)(1), with the Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) Innovation Centre, 2300 McKenzie Ave, Victoria, BC Canda, for Oceans 2.0 hardware, software, and support for the Office of Ocean Exploration and Research in Seattle, WA. A Sources Sought Notice was posted on July 10, 2018 and closed on July 20, 2018. No responses were received. Background The NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer is uniquely equipped with a high bandwidth satellite connection and a suite of collaboration tool referred to as telepresence technology . NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) leverages this technology to capitalize on a worldwide team of volunteer researchers operating on shore while the ship is at sea to provide a multidisciplinary team to explore the deep ocean. This state of the art software and hard ware will allow the data collection team aboard NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer to interact with massive video datasets composed of numerous data types and provide a real time and post cruise annotation and is the only solution on the market worldwinde that can provide thee serves and be ready for field deployment on board the Okeanos Explorer. Sole Source Justification ONC is a not-for profit organization, established by the University of Victoria to manage and enhance the VENUS and NEPTUNE observatories. VENUS and NEPTUNE represent over $200M in capital investment, and support transformative, multidisciplinary research in coastal and deep ocean environments whose applications shed light on ocean processes and their impacts on a global scale. Since its inception, ONC has also expanded to include observatories in the Arctic Ocean, expanded systems along the west coast of Canada, community volunteer ship data collection systems, coastal radars, ferry-based observations, and autonomous systems. A key aspect of ONC that stands out from other systems operating is the sophisticated interface for users (Oceans 2.0), including the ability to interact with specific instruments, download data in a variety of formats, explore visual and acoustic data sets, and create a variety of plots and images. Oceans 2.0 features data and information for the public, scientists and educators. Users access ONC using the Oceans 2.0 data management and archive system over the Internet using a web portal, web services, or pre-programmed retrievals. The three main components of Oceans 2.0 include (i) Seascribe - a web based real-time annotation system, (ii) SeaTube - a web based video delivery, post cruise annotation system and (iii) Several plotting and visualizations tools to plot oceanographic data collected during ROV expeditions. Although built originally for observatories, the use of these tools have been successfully expanded to ship based operations. Being web-based, these tools are especially useful for telepresence enabled expeditions, similar to NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, where most of data users (public and scientists) are based on shore. Oceans 2.0 provides the capability for the 24/7 acquisition of high volumes of extremely diverse data, data quality control and calibration, storage, visualization and access by a global audience, as well as providing a convenient interface to handle otherwise complex tasks associated with the remote monitoring and control of the ROV operations. Oceans 2.0 is able to manage the vast amount of data produced, and users can mine the live and archived data streams, to detect trends, classify content and extract features, feeding the results back into the master database, thereby turning raw data into usable information and setting the stage to allow the information to be transformed into knowledge. For more detailed information related to ONC, please see the supplemental document Oceans 2.0 - An Introduction. http://www.oceannetworks.ca/sites/default/files/images/u2564/Oceans%202.0%20-%20An %20Introduction.pdf There are no alternative sources for this software. This software is proprietary to ONC and no other software can perform the specialized functions extensively tailored to video data analysis that are configured for distributed web based access and hardened for at sea operations. No other company can make modifications to the software or offer subscription services for this proprietary software package. This contract would extend and improve upon services ONC provided as part of a project that expires in September, 2018. In 2016-2017 numerous science and engineering experts were consulted to identify potential solutions for NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer video annotation systems. Although single user video annotations tools are available (e.g. a scientist doing annotations on a ship) but these tools are not adaptable for real-time annotation online from multiple users spread across the globe. Oceans 2.0 provides unique capabilities for real-time ship and shore based annotations of video streams, post cruise annotations by multiple users, and ability to combine various data sources together. ONC does not have any resellers. ONC is the sole provider of this software and thus there is only one source. Underwater ROV operations are expensive (over $50,000 a day). The video data collected is only useful as much as the details of the annotations that are available with the video data. As it is logistically impossible to sail with experts from all the various fields of marine science, NOAA OER has invested heavily in telepresence technology. The high bandwidth satellite based connection (> $100,000 per month) enables video from ROV to stream live in real time. The scientists from all over the world tune in to observe the video. This provides an enormous opportunity to leverage interest and expertise of these scientists to annotate video. However, to achieve this objective, a web based annotation tool is required. The video data and ancillary oceanographic data are massive in size (350 GB/day) and complex to analyze. ONC Oceans 2.0 offers a solution of real time annotation (SeaScribe) which can be effortlessly extended for post cruise data analysis and annotation (using SeaTube and associated data plotting and analysis tools). Currently, NOAA does not have robust video annotation and database tools that supports onboard and onshore logging as well the post cruise video annotations therefore the government is failing to record valuable datasets. The Office of Ocean Exploration and Research has spent over a hundred thousand dollars over the last two and a half years to upgrade the video recording systems onboard the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer. Without the robust integrated logging and annotation system offered by Ocean 2.0 the data quality and discoverability of their new data set will be greatly reduced. There are no other software suites tailored for use on board a ship that are designed to be used with a telepresence enabled distributed science team. Creating a new custom system for OER's operations would cost more than a quarter-half million dollars and take years to develop. Utilizing Oceans 2.0 will provide significant cost saving for the government both in direct saving from the government not having to contract the development of a custom software package. It will also greatly increase the quality of the data NOAA collects and will benefit NOAA and the marine science community in ways that are impossible to quantify.