B08_140G0218R0016_Attachment_2_PWS.docx

140G0218R0016 Attachment 2

PERFORMANCE-BASED WORK STATEMENT (PWS)

Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) IT Support Services

INTRODUCTION

The Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) is a major national initiative led by the US Geological Survey that serves the needs of the earthquake monitoring, engineering, and research communities as well as national, state, and local governments, emergency response organizations, and the general public. The ANSS is an advanced monitoring system (modern digital seismographs and accelerographs, communications networks, data collection and processing centers, archival and alert systems, and well-trained personnel) largely centralized at the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) in Golden, Colorado. The ANSS is a National resource that operates with high performance standards, gathers critical technical data, and effectively provides timely and reliable earthquake products, information, and services. The ANSS automatically broadcasts timely and authoritative products describing the occurrence of earthquakes, earthquake source properties, the distribution of shaking, and, where feasible, broadcasts early warnings and alerts for the onset of strong ground shaking. Most importantly, the ANSS provides earthquake data, derived products, and information to the public, emergency responders, officials, engineers, educators, researchers, and other ANSS partners rapidly and in forms that are useful for their needs.

BACKGROUND

ANSS (The Advanced National Seismic System) is a mission-critical earthquake monitoring and reporting system. It is comprised of a series of networks that collect and manage earthquake data.

The mission of the ANSS is to provide accurate and timely data and information products for seismic events, including their effects on buildings and structures, employing modern monitoring methods and technologies. This mission serves a basic function of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) and drives the four basic goals of the system:

· Establish and maintain an advanced infrastructure for seismic monitoring throughout the United States that operates with high performance standards, gathers critical technical data, and effectively provides information products and services to meet the Nation's needs. The Advanced National Seismic System consists of modern seismographs, communication networks, data processing centers, and well-trained personnel; such an integrated system constantly records and analyzes seismic data and provides timely and reliable information on earthquakes and other seismic disturbances.

· Continuously monitor earthquakes and other seismic disturbances throughout the United States, including earthquakes that may cause a tsunami or precede a volcanic eruption, with special focus on regions of moderate to high hazard and risk.

· Thoroughly measure strong earthquake shaking at ground sites and in buildings and critical structures. Focus is on urban areas and near major active fault zones to gather greatly needed data and information for reducing earthquake impacts on buildings and structures.

· Automatically broadcast information when a significant earthquake occurs, for immediate assessment of its impact. Where feasible, for sites at distance from the epicenter, broadcast an early warning seconds before strong shaking arrives. Provide similar capabilities for automated warning and alert for tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.

To achieve these goals, ANSS has established a nationwide network of over 7000 earthquake sensor systems, serving all areas of the country subject to earthquake hazards and providing dense coverage in 26 at-risk urban areas (Figure 1). Sensors are located both in the ground and in buildings and other structures.

FIGURE 1 AT-RISK URBAN AREAS OF THE UNITED STATES.

The system provides real-time earthquake information for emergency response personnel, provides engineers with information about building and site response to strong shaking, and provides scientists with high-quality data needed to understand earthquake processes and structure and dynamics of the solid earth.

As part of its monitoring activities, the ANSS includes a national Backbone network, the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC), the National Strong Motion Project, and 15 regional seismic networks operated by USGS and its partners. When earthquakes strike, ANSS delivers real-time information, providing situational awareness for emergency-response personnel. In regions with sufficient seismic stations, that information includes, within minutes, a seismic event notification sent out over the Earthquake Notification Service (ENS), a ShakeMap showing the distribution of potentially damaging ground shaking, a PAGER Map showing population exposure and damage estimates, and a suite of informational pages on the Internet. All this information is used to target post-earthquake response efforts, as well as to inform the public. Information from ANSS is a key input to the USGS National Seismic Hazard Maps, (Figure 1) which help communities in earthquake-prone regions develop safer building practices.

At the core of the ANSS are two legacy operations, the U.S. National Seismographic Network (USNSN) and the NEIC. Together, these operations are responsible for detecting and reporting on earthquakes anywhere in the continental United States.

FIGURE 2 ANSS COMPONENTS

SCOPE:

For the purposes of this Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) contract, the services required are outlined in the general service and product areas described below. Firm Fixed Price Performance Based task orders and _ _____________ type task orders covering __________ and information technology related services issued under this contract will specify the nature of the work, the end products, the desired results of work performed, milestone schedule, phases, and metrics to be used to evaluate successful performance.

The contractor shall provide non-personal service, all plant equipment, labor, travel, and materials (unless otherwise provided herein or by task order) necessary for the hardening, maintenance, documentation, and design of an integrated IT infrastructure, including IT communications infrastructure (real-time telemetry via satellite and internet), data exchange protocols, real-time data processing on multiple platforms, distribution of real-time science information and products, and 24X7 operations. Additionally, the contractor may configure and install new machines in compliance with DOI and USGS security guidelines on an as-needed basis.

APPLICABLE DOCUMENTS

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

The Contractor Shall Provide:

1. Data and Information Management

2. Computer Systems Administration Operations and Maintenance

1. Data and Information Management

The contractor shall perform the following tasks in support of the USGS information management activities:

a. Perform technical writing, including the writing and editing of USGS documentation to document the architecture and Standard Operating Procedures for computer and data acquisition systems.

b. Perform information management functions in accordance with established standard operating procedures and guidelines.

c. Implement science data life cycle management principles in terms of science information standards; content acquisition and management strategies; metadata creation services; use of appropriate standards and best practices; use and adoption of digital object identifiers; adoption and best practices for data citations; information governance strategies; and distributed science content management within a Federal Agency.

2. Computer and Data Acquisition Infrastructure Administration, Operations and Maintenance

The contractor shall perform operation and maintenance of USGS on-site and off-site computer and data acquisition infrastructure. In order to effectively and efficiently operate and maintain the infrastructure and the wide variety of hardware and software systems, the contractor shall provide the following support services:

a. Provide technical support and management of on-site and off-site computer and data acquisition infrastructure, including operations and maintenance support on desktops, laptops, servers, routers, switches, and networking equipment.

b. Maintain and install all IT-related equipment, including desktops, laptops, servers, routers, switches, and networking equipment.

c. Maintain and install operating system software, virtualization software, utility software, and library software in terms of error corrections, revision updates, and documentation for Platform and Management, Content and Communications and Operation and Professional applications.

d. Maintain the various software and geospatial application programs and capabilities developed and/or used to support program goals and activities. This may entail installation, set-up, and support of on-site equipment loaned to off-site facilities or transported to off-site locations for demonstration purposes.

e. Provide user guidance, orientation, training, and support services related to computer operations. Troubleshoot system problems and equipment malfunctions for users and recommend/implement appropriate solutions. Provide technical assistance to users via telephone, or travel to a field site as required, for operating systems, utilities, and hardware configurations.

f. Maintain or develop operating system manuals and system hardware manuals, network diagrams, process flow charts, procedures, guidelines and logs.

g. Review configuration and settings for network devices such as firewalls, routers, switches, and hubs, and provide written assessment reports.

h. Configure network devices (routers, switches, firewalls, and hubs) in accordance with DOI and USGS IT security standards.

i. Develop and maintain software needed to integrate digital databases with GIS hardware and software.

j. Perform usability analysis of science tools/systems, statistical analysis, user analysis, search engine optimization.

k. Evaluate new technologies and provide written evaluation addressing how new technologies could be incorporated into the infrastructure to improve the robustness and reliability of the operation.

l. Provide assistance and guidance in the implementation of new technologies.

3. Web and Database Applications and Hardware

The contractor shall perform the following tasks in support of the Web and Database Applications and Hardware as follows:

a. Establish requirements gathering and communications protocols.

b. Design and implement iterative feature definition, test, and release procedures.

c. Document and implement software release schedules.

d. Design work plans for software and infrastructure build and release.

e. Organize issue tracking and conflict resolution discussions.

f. Design work plans for software and infrastructure documentation and test.

g. Organize issue tracking and conflict resolution discussions.

h. Design, implement, manage, and maintain server-based Web infrastructure, including but not limited to Apache Web Servers, Tomcat Applications Servers, network storage units, cluster management software, configuration management software, and application deployment software, based on development staff needs.

i. Design, and implement Web-compatible data synthesis, analysis, visualization and management solutions utilizing modern web development/database technologies such XXXXXXXX, consuming LDAP and other authentication services, and ensuring adherence to NIST/DOI/USGS security policies/practices, Open GIS Standards, and other best practices.

j. Design and implement Web-compatible geospatial data management manipulation and presentation options, and manage and maintain OGC-compliant geospatial server-based applications including but not limited to ESRI ArcGIS Server, ESRI GeoPortal, GI-CAT, PostGIS, Minnesota Map Server, and GeoServer, and other open source CSW and geospatial support tools based on development staff needs.

k. Design and implement Web-compatible modeling options, and manage and maintain model servers, including but not limited to supporting R, Java, C, and C++, based on development staff needs.

l. Design, develop, and deploy production-level Web applications using approved development scaffolds and frameworks, based on business assessments. The frameworks may include Java, Grails, PHP, Drupal, Python, and perl.

m. Ensure all generated source code exists and is maintained in the version control system.

n. Ensure all development and support tasks, goals, and assumptions are documented in the tracking system.

o. Design and incorporate unit tests in all development projects.

p. Design and incorporate a coordinated build process for all development projects.

q. Document and implement test procedures for all development projects.

r. Design, build, and implement User Help, Tutorials, and training materials for all development projects. All materials required for the performance of this element will be provided by the Government.

s. Provide hands-on instruction, training, demonstrations of software capabilities, operational structures, and feature potential.

t. Generate and maintain time tracking reports on all project activities.

u. Comply with established operating procedures and guidelines for software and infrastructure management and support.

v. Provide user guidance, orientation, training, and support services related to developed applications.

w. Troubleshoot application problems and unexpected behaviors, and recommend/implement appropriate solutions. Provide technical assistance to users via telephone, or travel to a partner site as required for application coordination.

DELIVERABLES

Reporting requirements will be defined in each task order. Deliverable items at the task order level will vary depending on the nature of the requirement. Items may include, but not limited to: log books and spreadsheets of field collected data; compiled databases; scientific reports and manuscripts, GIS data; documentation packages for computer programs; web designs and pages; maps and figures; computer software; man-hour and cost reporting requirements.

All reports and deliverables submitted at the contract level shall include a reference to the task order number. Deliverables for the Program Management functions provided under this contract may include:

1. Contractor shall provide a monthly status report which identifies tasks in progress or completed during the reporting period and man-hours associated with each task, projected workload for the coming reporting period, problems encountered and/or other issues. Commensurate with the monthly status report, the contractor shall prepare a monthly Performance and Cost Report, depicting monthly and cumulative hours and dollars expended by labor category, hours/dollars remaining available on the contract, and a statement as to whether there are sufficient hours/dollars available to complete the requirement. If obligated funds are insufficient to complete the task, the contractor shall provide an estimate of additional funds needed. “Contractor shall not be required to perform, and the Government shall not be obligated to pay for any tasks without sufficient funding.”

2. Monthly reports of financial information and status on all task orders, including authorized CLINs, amount of obligation, labor hours worked, travel expenses and balances of funds for all CLINs.

3. Technical project plans.

4. Maintain financial records necessary to substantiate charges made against task orders issued on the contract.

QUALITY ASSURANCE PLAN

Note: These are general quality control requirements and further control will be defined at the task order level, if necessary.

Prior to performance, the contractor shall establish and maintain a complete Quality Control Program to ensure that the requirements of the contract and each task order are provided as specified. The Government will have a Quality Assurance Plan (QAP) to ensure contractor progress is made and to assess the contractor’s performance under various task orders. The Government will document surveillance activities. When performance falls below acceptable quality levels as defined in each task order the designated contractor representative or Program Manager (PM) will be notified and appropriate corrective actions implemented. Possible remedies include the contractor being required to perform the work over, rework or the government may withhold payment for work that’s not incompliance with requirements.

WORK SITE/EQUIPMENT/SUPPLIES

While some of the work can be performed at the contractor’s place of business, the contractor will be required to provide assessments and system review services at the USGS offices in Golden, Colorado. Contractors are required to obtain background checks and DOI credentials in accordance with FISMA and FIPS 199.

GLOSSARY AND SYSTEM DESCRIPTION:

Systems Integration—How It All Fits Together There are three main functional components of NEIC’s system: data acquisition, processing, and presentation (fig. 1). Each functional component is composed of multiple specialized applications or subsystems, all of which communicate with, or depend on, one or many other subsystems. These dependencies are confined to shared services and shared data or products. Each component contributes to and(or) uses shared services to achieve consistency across the entire system. Figure 1 depicts a summary of NEIC inputs, outputs, and data flows that span the functional components. In this diagram and throughout the document, data acquisition subsystems are purple, data processing subsystems are blue, data presentation subsystems are orange, shared services are red, and data integration paths are green.

The numerous subsystems across the functional components work to produce products or detailed, supporting information about earthquakes. Each product uniquely tells a piece of the story for any given earthquake. The richness of the data set is significantly increased when all of the products are brought together to tell the full story. This subtle, simple, yet powerful goal is accomplished by our systems integration approach, which is described in this document.

Figure 1. National Earthquake Information Center functional components.

The details behind the summarized functional components are quite extensive. An overview will be provided for each functional component followed by summaries of the applications in that component. Application or subsystem summaries will describe the application function, inputs, outputs, dependencies, and provide references for further details. Additionally, these subsystems create numerous valuable products. In this document, the products are described relative to the role they play in integration, references and links to product details are provided for further reading.

Data Acquisition Data acquisition is composed primarily of the Edge and the Product Distribution Layer (PDL). The Edge earned its name because it is at the edge of the entire system and it interfaces with the rest of the world. It focuses on continuous waveform (or time-series) data and station metadata. The Edge handles gaps, data loss and recovery, and homogenizes all the data to make it available in standard formats for the rest of the system. The focus of PDL is acquisition and distribution of messages or discrete data, such as earthquake parametric data, and other event centric products. Also provided by PDL are data-recovery features and data-format homogenization. The essential difference between the focuses of these systems is that the Edge works on continuous data and supporting metadata, where PDL is message oriented, for discrete data that is derived from specific events or earthquakes.

For earthquake parametric data, both the Edge and PDL subsystems can handle multiple input formats, but provide conversion to QuakeML, an international XML (eXtensible Markup Language) standard format for earthquake data (https://quake.ethz.ch/quakeml). QuakeML is the standard format for earthquake parametric data for the entire system and the majority of NEIC’s collaborators (Advance National Seismic System, 2013). Using an international, extensible, and standard format significantly increases the ease of integration and shared code for data parsing across the subsystems and with collaborators.

Edge The Edge subsystem handles vast amounts of data from many organizations in many formats and homogenizes it for simplified and efficient consumption, both within the NEIC and externally (fig. 2).

Figure 2.

Edge data acquisition subsystem. (ANSS, Advanced National Seismic System; RSNs, Regional Seismic Networks; GSN, Global Seismic Network; MDS, Metadata Server; CWB, Continuous Waveform Buffer; RWS, Random Access Memory (RAM) Waveserver; TCP, Transmission Control Protocol; IRIS, Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology; NEIC, National Earthquake Information Center; PDL, Product Distribution Layer; PGA XML, Peak Ground Acceleration in extensible markup language.)

This subsystem handles four basic kinds of input information: raw trace (continuous time-series data), station metadata (for example, coordinates and responses), unassociated pick data, and late-arriving contributed event parametric data. Parametric data refers to earthquake parameters including location, magnitude, phases, and moment tensors. For the raw time-series inputs, which come from dozens of regional and international networks, the Edge provides storage and access via multiple waveform interfaces including: Continuous Waveform Buffer (CWB), Winston Waveserver, and Earthworm Waveserver. Station metadata is stored in the Metadata Server (MDS) and available via a data service with a defined query interface. Detailed supporting documentation is available online (ftp://hazards.cr.usgs.gov/CWBQuery). The contributed parametric data comes in via email in different formats that the Edge converts to QuakeML. The Edge then distributes the data via the NEIC Private PDL hub, as these data are generally intended for NEIC consumption only. The Edge subsystem is written predominately in Java and is compatible with MySQL and Postgres.

The Edge subsystem generates peak ground acceleration products for triggered strong- motion data that is transmitted when sensor movement exceeds a pre-defined threshold.

Currently, Edge takes triggered strong-motion data and applies a simple peak ground acceleration (PGA) algorithm to produce XML-formatted data that are sent to ShakeMap via SendFile. To reduce the number of technologies supported and to simplify the overall maintenance of the NEIC system, this PGA data could be made into a product and distributed via PDL. This needs further evaluation and thus is depicted as a red arrow in the Edge Subsystem diagram (fig. 2).

Product Distribution Layer The PDL is a message-based distribution platform. It provides a standard distribution mechanism for both sending and receiving messages. For the NEIC, these messages are well- formatted data packages of derived seismic event information, also known as “products.” Example products include origins, phases, moment tensors, shaking intensity maps, and loss and damage reports. Definitions for all products can be found online (http://ehppdl1.cr.usgs.gov/userguide/products/index.html). Products are well-formatted text- file(s) (for example, XML), binary file(s), a set of directories with many files, or any combination of these. Regardless of the format, products have a set of properties, organized as key value pairs, which describe the product and make it identifiable and searchable, independent of the underlying product format.

As products are distributed via PDL, they are associated and prioritized by the Indexer.

The Indexer applies a set of business rules to associate and prioritize products, where NEIC applies network authoritative logic to assign preference, or what we call “preferredness”, to products. Preferredness is an ordered priority for data such that one product from one source is ultimately the most preferred. The network-based business rules operate on data such as source and event location. Both of these features, aggregation and preferredness, are essential to integrate and accommodate multiple products contributed from different organizations and algorithms.

Products are simultaneously distributed internally between all subsystems and externally with collaborators. As a result, collaboration is necessary on all product definitions and in the presentation of those products. This collaboration requires NEIC developers to coordinate across multiple groups, internal and external to the USGS, and with several regional, national, and international organizations. Consequently, significant documentation and testing are necessary to achieve effective integration. Detailed supporting documentation on PDL and products can be found online (http://ehppdl1.cr.usgs.gov).

A strength of PDL is that it supports loose coupling between data/product producers (senders) and consumers (receivers). All product producers and consumers only need to communicate with the PDL hubs, via PDL Product Client software. The hubs take care of the broader event association, via the Indexer, and wider data distribution via PDL. Because producers and consumers initiate connections to the hubs, most users do not need to reconfigure firewalls if their data needs or collaborators change. Producers use a private key to sign products when they are sent to the PDL Hubs; the key verifies this signature using a public key before distributing products, to ensure only that authorized producers are able to send products.

Receiving clients may optionally verify these signatures as well. Receiving clients can be configured to trigger processing when new products arrive, either using command line arguments or a Java application programming interface (API), eliminating polling latency. The PDL Product Client software supports configuration options to filter the products a receiver downloads. Conveniently, and quite significantly from a maintenance perspective, the PDL hubs, the sender PDL Product Client, and the receiver PDL Product Client software are the same code baselines, with different configurations. The PDL software is publically available for download and documented online (http://ehppdl1.cr.usgs.gov). Additional supporting libraries for parsing formatted products and programmatically searching for and downloading products are available also available online (https://github.com/USGS/devcorner).

The NEIC PDL hubs are configured to host a private/internal and a public/external data distribution stream (fig. 3). The NEIC additionally uses a relay PDL hub to download products from the public/external distribution stream once, rather than many times, for every subsystem/application that runs at the NEIC. This is an efficiency step to reduce network bandwidth consumption, which is a valuable resource at the NEIC most significantly due to raw seismic time series data acquisition and redistribution. The private PDL hub supports acquisition and internal distribution of data that is intended for and limited to the NEIC only.

Figure 3. Product distribution layer hub architecture. (NEIC, National Earthquake Information Center;

TWC, Tsunami Warning Center; ANSS RSN’s, Advance National Seismic System Regional Seismic Networks; EIDS, Earthquake Information Distribution System; PDL, Product Distribution Layer; ComCat, Comprehensive Catalog; PAGER, Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response; TED, Tweet Earthquake Dispatch; DYFI, “Did You Feel It?”; NEST, NEIC Executive Summary Tool; EMSC, European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre; CISN, California Integrated Seismic Network.)

In the “Product Distribution Layer Hub Architecture” diagram (fig. 3), the legacy Earthquake Information Data Exchange (EIDS) hubs are almost completely phased out, as they supported only limited text-based products; thus, the corresponding integration arrows are drawn in red. For backwards compatibility with EIDS there is support in PDL, via the EIDSInputWedge, as documented online (http://ehppdl1.cr.usgs.gov/userguide/eidsinputwedge.html).

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