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COMMERCE BUSINESS DAILY ISSUE OF APRIL 12, 2001 PSA #2828
SOLICITATIONS

D -- RADAR MOSAIC WEATHER DATA SERVICES

Notice Date
April 10, 2001
Contracting Office
55 Broadway; Cambridge, MA 02142
ZIP Code
02142
Solicitation Number
DTRS57-01-R-20017
Response Due
April 25, 2001
Point of Contact
Point of Contact -- Diane McKenzie, Contract Specialist, (617) 494-6318
E-Mail Address
Contract Specialist (mckenzie@volpe.dot.gov)
Description
The Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe Center) intends to negotiate on a non-competitive basis with Weather Service International (WSI) Corporation for continuous access to the weather data required by the Federal Aviation Administration s (FAA) Enhanced Traffic Management System (ETMS), including but not limited to, radar mosaics of base reflectivity for the United States (U.S.), Canada, and San Juan and an echo tops mosaic for the U.S., lightning, alphanumeric text, high resolution gridded model data and the distribution license of the data except lightning data. This data set is important for the mission of ETMS. ETMS is an operational FAA system providing the means by which the FAA can monitor and control air traffic. A major component of ETMS is its weather overlay functions and backgrounds processing functions that requires access to operational weather data. To that end, the ETMS Aviation Weather Network (AWN) has been evolved over the years to receive, ingest and process weather data from WSI. The result of market research supports the Government s decision that WSI Corporation is the only known source that has the ability to provide the requisite services and data meeting the following Government requirements. The Contractor shall provide the weather data in a digital stream for direct input into the ETMS AWN. The Contractor shall transmit the data to ETMS Hub site via non-Internet, reliable, robust, independent and dual-redundant communication links, at least one of which must be a land-based circuit with sufficient bandwidth to carry all w eather data required by ETMS. All the data must be compatible with the existing ETMS application programs such as the AWN, Traffic Situation Display (TSD) and the ETMS flight modeling program. The U.S. radar data mosaics shall be of a minimum of 2km spatial resolution from all available National Weather Service radar sites. The data shall contain 16 levels of radar reflectivity intensity. The data must be quality controlled prior to delivery to ETMS. A high-resolution shall be available every 5 minutes with automated quality control algorithms. A medium-resolution product of 15-minute temporal resolution is required with manual quality control check. The Canadian radar mosaic shall be of 2km spatial resolution and 15-minute temporal resolution on the national scale. The Contractor must receive this data from Environment Canada via a direct, dedicated communications circuit. Internet access to the Canadian data is not acceptable. Echo tops shall contain the highest detected echoes above a given location. The data shall be of 4km spatial resolution and is updated every 10 minutes. The data is on the national scale. ETMS TSD software requires that radar mosaics are run-length encoded. Lightning data shall contain time, location, polarity and amplitude of flashes and shall be from a continuous data feed. The data shall be accurate to within 10km or less over the contiguous 48 states. The data shall be on the national scale. The data must be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and shall be available for redistribution to other ETMS remote sites. The Gov ernment will acquire the requisite service, data, and the necessary distribution licenses except for lightning data, for a period of one-year base period and four one-year options. All responsible sources may respond to this synopsis and responses will be fully considered by the Agency. Interested firms are requested to submit two (2) copies of descriptive documentation in sufficient detail, do not include any pricing information, to allow an evaluation of a bonafide capability to satisfy the Government s requirements within fifteen (15) calendar days of publication of this notice. Please send documentation to Volpe National Systems Center, Attn: Diane E. McKenzie, DTS-853, 55 Broadway, Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA 02142-1093. Firms will be required to demonstrate that its weather d ata is compatible with ETMS by supplying a sample data set in Hewlett Packard 4mm 2.GB 90M data cartridge, of the radar mosaics of base reflectivity for the U.S., Canada and San Juan, an echo tops mosaic for the U.S., 80 km Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) 211, MESO-Eta and global AVN. If the sample data set is compatible with ETMS, the Contractor shall provide a weather data feed to the ETMS AWN for a reasonable period of time so that the Volpe Center will be able to determine that its weather data is compatible with ETMS in operational environment. The Contractor shall also be required to show that it has in place and operating, a weather data capacity that will meet the weather data delivery requirements of ETMS. In the absence of responses from firms who can demonstrate their capability to perform this requirement, the Volpe Center intends to negotiate with WSI Corporation on a non-competitive basis under the authority of 41 U.S.C. 253 (c)(1). See Note 22. For minority, women-owned and disadvantaged business enterprises: The Department of Transportation (DOT), Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU), has programs to assist minority, women-owned and disadvantaged business enterprises to acquire short-term working capital and bonding assistance for transportation-related contracts. This is applicable to any eligible prime or subcontract at any tier. The DOT Bonding Assistance Program enables firms to apply for bid, performance and payment bonds up to $1.0 million per contract. The DOT provides 80% guaranty on the bond amount to a surety against los ses. Loans are also available under the DOT Short Term Lending Program (STLP) at prime interest rates to provide accounts receivable financing. The maximum line of credit is $500,000. for further information and applicable forms concerning Bonding Assistance Program and/or the STLP, please call the OSBDU at (800) 532-1169. For information concerning the acquisition, contact the contracting official listed above.
Web Link
Volpe Center Acquisition Division home page (http://www.volpe.dot.gov/procure/index.html)
Record
Loren Data Corp. 20010412/DSOL002.HTM (D-100 SN50I835)

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