U.S. Geological Survey, 205B 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive, Reston, VA 20192

T -- SERVICES OF LASER AND RADAR TECHNOLOGY FROM AIRCRAFT TO PROFILE GROUND POC Contact Contracting Officer Sharon McDowell (703)648-7375 This is not an announcement of a solicitation. This is a Request for Information (RFI). Several U.S. Federal agencies are forming a consortium to partner on elevation related topics of mutual interest. On behalf of this consortium, the U.S. Geological Survey is issuing a request for information. Of paramount interest are the characteristics of data that can be obtained from new or improved sensors using technologies such as Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture RADAR (IFSAR), and the extent to which such data or its derivatives can be distributed. 1) Please explain the technology involved in your approach(es) to generating elevation data- limit this explanation to 4 pages; 2) What horizontal and vertical accuracies (at specific sensor heights) are representative of your approach to elevation data gathering? By what means do you confirm the vertical and horizontal accuracy of your data, and in what manner are these accuracies warrantied for a given dataset?; 3) Do you produce ellipsoid or orthometric elevation information? If producing orthometric height information, what methodology is used (i.e. are ellipsoid heights converted to orthometrics using a geoid model, or are orthometric heights produced directly using benchmark control on the ground?); 4) To what horizontal and vertical datums do you reference your data?; 5) What, if any, treatments do you use at the interfaces of land and open water? Can your system penetrate water to record bathymetry and, if so, to what depth?; 6) How do you treat vegetation, snow cover, other natural cover, and manmade features in elevation data gathering? What options exist for differentiating such features? With what accuracy can your techniques recognize and selectively extract such features?; 7) What pricing and licensing options are available? To illustrate such options, provide approximate estimates for two specific examples, each for gridded bald-earth data and for gridded non-bald earth data of 5m spacing and 30cm vertical accuracy: a) 100 mi2 covering a watershed in western OR, and b) 1500 mi2 covering 3 counties in eastern GA.; 8) What restrictions, if any, do you place on the distribution of data -- original source, decimated versions, and derivatives -- in the public domain? Do such restrictions vary by geographic location or other characteristic?; 9) What formats of data do you support?; 10) What is the current extent, in square miles, of your data holdings (breakout the classes of data if any)? What aerial extent are you planning in the next year?; 11) What limitations exist on your technological approach(es) -- for example, weather, flight height, vegetation characteristics, soil conditions, etc.; 12) Are evaluation data sets available? What relevant customer references can you provide? No formal solicitation or contract will result form this synopsis for industry information. The Government will not pay for information provided in response to this synopsis. Information responding to this request should be received by COB on April 14, 2000. Posted 03/16/00 (W-SN435049). (0076)

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