NOAA NESDIS EO-DT AI_BAA Community Day Presentation (1).pdf

National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service

Broad Agency Announcement Demonstrating the Digital Twin for Earth Observations (EO-DT) and Assessing the Benefits for the NOAA mission

May 10, 2022

Community Day Briefing | May 10, 2022

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NOAA NESDIS Digital Twin for Earth Observations (EO-DT) BAA Community Day

Tuesday, May 10

● 10:00-11:00 AM: Plenary Session

○ Presentations by NOAA:

■ Introduction/Administrative and Opening Acquisition Remarks from NOAA Leadership

● NESDIS Joint Venture Program overview

■ Overview of Community Day and Ground Rules by Contracting Officer

■ EO-DT AI BAA details

● 11:00 AM: General Questions and Answers Session

● 11:40 AM: Questions and Answers Session for Small Business

● 11:55 AM: Closing Remarks

● 1:00-5:00 PM: 1-on-1 Sessions (20 minutes each, previously scheduled)

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Community Day Coordination Plenary Session (Recorded)

• Please sign in using link in chat

• Please insert your questions in the chat box

• NOAA team will review questions and provide verbal responses

• Questions that cannot be answered in Plenary will be taken as actions to respond by agreed date

One-on-One meetings (previously scheduled) (Recorded)

• 20-minute private discussions, every half hour

• Core Government Evaluation team and AGO will represent NOAA

• Questions will be recorded

• Non-proprietary questions that pertain to all potential responders will be posted publicly

• Questions that cannot be answered in one-on-ones will be taken as actions to respond to by an agreed date

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Agenda

• Welcome & Introduction

• NOAA/NESDIS/OSAAP Joint Venture Program

• Goals of Earth Observation -Digital Twin BAA

• Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Process

• Contacts for Questions

• Q&A Session

○ General Questions and Answers

○ Questions and Answers Session for Small Business

• Closing Remarks

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Welcome and Introduction

● Joint Venture Program established to leverage capabilities in development by federal partners & industry to provide high return on funds

● JV uses BAAs as one of many tools to build upon investments made to meet NESDIS mission needs

● Demonstrates that new technologies will reliably meet NOAA’s operational needs

○ Provide confidence that an emerging technology can be used in an operational environment

○ Reduce risk for new technologies

○ Demonstrate the appropriate reliability

● How to best implement resources for enterprise architecture

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Why we do a BAA?

• Since NOAA is looking for the best means to meet its mission needs, the BAA allows for all types of implementations and technologies to be submitted for potential study

• It allows more flexibility when the end result is not yet fully developed and when we need agility in the implementation

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Why EO-DT is important to NOAA?

• Digital twin technologies may enable us to enhance our ability to process, monitor, quality-control, consolidate, fuse, and assimilate environmental observations.

• EO-DT may streamline the satellite data ground processing and dissemination to users and applications.

• NOAA will use the results of this demonstration to determine how EO-DT might serve as the next generation ground enterprise system in operations.

• Identify the benefits of interfacing with the Earth System approach modeling effort being undertaken in NOAA

• Best approaches for achieving an agile, scalable EO-DT.

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BAA Technical Content

• The BAA* is seeking to fund partnerships with other U.S Government agencies, FFRDC’s, UARCs, academia, and/or private industry to:

▪ explore enhancing the NOAA/NESDIS mission of processing environment data, from ingest to dissemination

▪ generate, assess and deliver to NOAA a validated digital twin system for Earth observations

▪ applicable to various radiometric and geophysical variables, but should be designed in a way that could easily be expanded to cover all the Earth systems measurements

*The BAA will be for demonstration purposes only and currently there is no plan to adopt the EO-DT into the operational environment.

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Successful Completion of BAA Goals

• A flexible digital earth twin system, that allows the user (or public in general) to easily access current and past environmental data.

• A modern visualization toolset to allow the display of the DT data as well as the environmental time series/trends.

• Able to ingest several input files.

• The gridding of the data should be flexible (uniform and non-uniform gridding)

• The grid value computation should be based on a mechanism of fusion of data (using ML and/or CV or other efficient techniques) from multiple sources.

• Effort should be made to standardize the EO-DT with other DT efforts (such as those in NASA) to move toward interoperability, common interfaces, etc.

• Output should be at least compatible with expected format for major NOAA systems. (e.g., GSI and UFS)

• Computer processing time less than 10 mins to process one full global DT

• Document the lessons learned from this project and recommendations on how to proceed with increasing the parameters included in the DT and moving a DT (this or future) to operations.

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Software Development Approach

• Preference is to follow the agile implementation approach with supported frequent technical interactions.

• (1) quick adaptation in case of challenges,

• (2) strong alignment of activities with expectations.

• Effort followed and guided by a gov supported team of experts to provide critical information.

• Open to an alternative approach in software development.

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Two-Step Process to the BAA

• Solicit white papers from industry on concepts responsive to technical content of the BAA

• White Papers (not to exceed 5 pages) reviewed by a technical evaluation board

• Sub-set of White Papers selected to receive Invitations for Proposals

• Selection based on strength of concept and available funding

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Partnering & Collaboration

• Forming a team with other interested entities to submit a response to this BAA is an option

• The Prime organization will be responsible for putting in place all the sub-contracts and other teaming arrangements

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EO-DT BAA Timeline Target Schedule

• Receipt of White Papers – May 27 June 7

• Release of Invitation for Proposal – June 24 July 7

• Proposal Submission – July 14 July 25

• Contract Award - Sep 2 September 7

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Contracting Officer Introduction

• Gabriela Bravo, NOAA Acquisition and Grants Office (AGO)

• Contracting Support: Bryton Curtis, NOAA AGO

• Engagement for this BAA:

▪ Gaby, with a cc: to Bryton, are the sole points of contact for questions and exchanges of information

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QUESTIONS

Contact for follow up questions and instructions:

Gabriela Bravo gabriela.bravo@noaa.gov

Bryton Curtis bryton.curtis@noaa.gov

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Back-up Charts

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Comparison Between NOAA’s Earth Observing and NASA’s Earth Systems Digital Twins

NOAA/NESDIS EO-DT

● Developing a single global Earth Digital

Twin and follows the Earth System approach

● Focused on Earth Observations

○ Focused on the monitoring aspect and not the modeling (but will interface with models)

○ Incorporating the functions of the NESDIS ground enterprise (quality control, calibration monitoring, remote sensing, data fusion/assimilation)

NASA/ESTO ESDT

● Developing Multiple Earth Digital

Twins focused on a variety of themes

● Focused on the modeling side to answer what-if scenarios

○ Surrogate modeling for rapid scenarios processing

● Envisioned that the NASA/ESTO-developed Earth Digital Twin could be integrated, when relevant and/or appropriate, to the NOAA/NESDIS Earth System global Digital Twin.