Amendment_0002_SOW.pdf

Attachment I June 22, 2017

Aircraft Meteorological Data Acquisition

Statement of Work

I. Purpose

This document is a Statement of Work (SOW) for the acquisition of aircraft-based observations by the National Weather Service.

II. Scope and Mission

A. Mission The National Weather Service (NWS) provides weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy. Meteorological observations, through the process of data assimilation, are a critical ingredient to providing these forecasts and warnings and for generating computer-based forecast guidance. Observations are also used for operational verification, populating historical data bases to describe climate, and supporting forensic studies. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) obligates member nations to have a program for the observing, recording, and reporting of weather observations from aircraft operating on international air routes. ICAO Annex 3 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, Meteorological Service for International Air Navigation, documents this obligation and defines the types of observations to be made, and the reporting and recording requirements.

B. Scope

The objective is to acquire atmospheric observations from commercial aircraft leading to the improved prediction of thunderstorms, flash floods, hail, tornadoes, clouds, icing, and climate. The prediction of these phenomena is essential to protecting lives and property.

The contract requires data meeting the requirements of the government for wind and temperature observations from commercial aircraft.

Temperature and wind observations from commercial aircraft are an important source of real-time information for global and regional weather prediction as well as operational forecasts and warnings from the NWS. They also complement satellite data with high quality and vertically high resolution in situ information, such as rawinsondes (“weather balloons”) and various types of ground-based remote sensing platforms.

Observations of temperature and wind from large aircraft are routinely derived from FAA-required, on-board sensors and software; this system is called the Meteorological Communications and Addressing System (MDCRS). Many, but not all, domestic and international airlines provide MDCRS observations to the NWS via commercial contracts. When on transoceanic and intracontinental routes, aircraft also transmit weather observations via a separate communications paradigm and source known as Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS).

In recent years (since 2011) FAA has administered a contract to obtain MDCRS data from airlines that are based in the United States with flight routes both within the United States and abroad. Since 2014, the NWS has administered a separate contract to obtain MDCRS data from previously data-sparse regions, both from airlines based in the United States and based abroad. This separate contract was also used to obtain en-route ADS data by Contract (ADS-C) along transoceanic and intracontinental flights. The scope of this SOW is to continue procurement of data from both the MDCRS and ADS sources of aircraft based observations currently obtained via the contracts recently administered by both NWS and the FAA.

III. Requirements

A. Key Elements

The contractor shall:

i. Maintain high data delivery and reliability

ii. Provide aircraft data meeting WMO and NWS data standards referenced in this SOW and Table 1 in Section B of this section.

B. Reference Documents

The reference documents listed in Table 1 below are referred to throughout this SOW and are incorporated by reference. These documents contain descriptions of and standards for aircraft data sources, meteorological observables, data formats, accuracies, data generating software and other elements of providing meteorological observations from commercial aircraft providing aircraft observation reports.

Table 1. Non-Government Publications

Identifier Title

WMO-No.306 WMO Manual on Codes, International Codes, Volumes 1.1 and 1.2, 2010 Edition

WMO Report 958 The WMO AMDAR Reference Manual

WMO Report 114 Onboard Software Functional Requirements Specification, Table 6, July 2013

ARINC Specification 620 Data Link Ground System Standard and Interface Specification (DGSS/IS) and its supplements

C. General Requirement The Contractor must meet requirements applicable to aircraft observations in the documents cited in Table 1 and the data requirements in Section E of the SOW as well as the requirements for project management and services.

D. Project Management and Services

The contractor shall manage the collection of and dissemination of the aircraft observation data to the government meeting the performance requirements for data quality, availability and spatial and temporal reporting resolution in this SOW and WMO No 306 Manual on Codes Volume 1.1 Section FM 42-XI ext AMDAR and WMO Report 958, the WMO AMDAR Reference Manual.

The Contractor must provide a management plan within 30 days after award describing all labor, equipment, and materials (if not government furnished) resources to implement, manage, control, operate, and maintain the required services as outlined in this SOW. The contractor management plan must describe how the contractor will accomplish the following:

i. coordination, execution, and management of Contractor, any Sub-contractor(s) and airline efforts in support of the program;

ii. Reporting of the following topics

Project status

Data volumes collected, including number of ascent and descent soundings and en-route data

Changes in number of participating aircraft, airlines, and domains covered

The NWS must have clear, timely, and effective access to levels of management within the Contractor’s organization that have authority to ensure that sufficient resources are available for the program execution and the proper level of attention is given to the resolution of any problems that may arise. The Contractor is responsible for management and control of all subcontractors/team members to ensure compliance with all requirements of the contract.

Monthly meetings and reports, semi annual and annual reports:

The contractor must meet with the NWS on a monthly basis and provide within 5 business days after the end of each month a written report. The report may be provided through a written internet web site, which includes the following entries:

* Data Collection Report. The contractor shall provide the number of individual observations provided per day for for temperature and winds. The data collection report shall include the number of ascents and descents per day per applicable aircraft and the total number of soundings.

* Ground Processing Report. The contractor shall provide performance metrics documenting ground processing and circuit availability.

* Semi annual technical program reviews provided and annual written reports will be provided to the government consolidating information in the monthly reports. Semi annual technical program reviews will be provided by the end of June and December every year and the annual report will be provided to the government by the end of January every year.

iii. Engineering and technical support

The Contractor must provide engineering and technical support services to ensure proper design, development, implementation, and operation of aircraft observation data services.

The Contractor must receive and process messages from participating airlines. The exact contents of the messages will vary by airline and airframe type provided: a) the message formats from the aircraft are identical to those already used by another participating airline; b) formats comply with defined World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and industry standards such as ARINC 620; c) messages must contain the elements required by this SOW and WMO Reports 306 and 958

iv. Service verification

The Contractor must operate the aircraft observation network such that it provides the required communications and data link services described herein twenty-four hours per day, seven days a week. If any critical system, including but not limited to, contractor operations center, processing IT infrastructure, or communications circuits, are operating below standards, the contractor shall notify the NWS Telecommunications Gateway within 15 minutes of the onset of the problem by phone (human to human) and electronic notification via email.

The Contractor must serve as the liaison between the Government and the participating airlines for the purpose of reviewing the performance of aircraft observations, identifying problem areas, and correcting any problem areas under the Contractor’s control in a timely and expeditious manner

E. Data Requirements

i. Data type

The primary requirements are for meteorological observations of temperature, wind, pressure, and location (latitude, longitude, geometrical height above the Earth’s surface and time). Following location, the order of decreasing importance is as above (temperature, wind, and pressure).

ii. Data quality

The Government requires high quality, low latency atmospheric measurements from in situ sensors on commercial aircraft. This data will support NOAA, FAA, and public missions. The data quality must meet all quality requirements in this SOW and WMO Report 958, the WMO AMDAR Reference Manual.

iii. Data availability

In the event of a communications outage, data shall be stored and re-transmitted at the earliest opportunity once communications have been re-established. A report shall be generated for any data outage exceeding 2 hours, giving the number of observations re-transmitted. Monthly data availability of 98% is required by the government.

iv. Data interfaces:

The contractor communication interfaces to NWS shall utilize software interfaces that enable efficient transmission of data from the aircraft sensors, coding of messages within aircraft software and dissemination of observations from the aircraft to the contractors ground processing facility The Contractor shall ensure data are transmitted to the NWS Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS) in BUFR format as described in WMO No 306 V1.2 section B and at intervals agreed to with the government. The contractor shall enable a remote monitoring capability for the NWS to monitor data collection status to include:

* Support the ability to monitor data delivery and availability status in real time including delivery of data collectives (BUFR files) sent to the NWS

* Support the ability to monitor circuit status between the contractor and the NWS

v. Data Technical Specifications

Technical specifications for observed and other reported quantities are given for meteorological observations in the AMDAR Onboard Software Functional Requirements Specification, Table 6, published by the World Meteorological Organization, Report No. 114, July 2013. These specifications are summarized below.

a. Observation Accuracy

i. Temperature – 0.5 Kelvin

ii. Wind Direction and Speed– 5 degrees and 1.5 m/sec

iii. Pressure – 3.0-4.0 hPa

iv. Location

1. Height -1% near Earth’s surface and 0.5% below 200 hPa

2. Meridional (North-South) position – 0.7 km

3. Longitudinal (East-West) position – 0.7 km

4. Time – 1 second

b. Measurement units

Observations must be reported in Standard Units as described in WMO Report 306 and WMO Report 958 the AMDAR Reference Guide

c. Data Format

Observations must be transmitted in the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) International Binary Universal Form for the Representation of meteorological data (BUFR) as described in WMO Report 306 Volume 1.2 section B.

d. Delivery, latency and data security

The requirement for data latency varies by regional domain. The delivery of data to NOAA, including data latency, will range between 2 and 5 minutes (MDCRS domestic horizontal domain), 30 minutes to 60 minutes (international horizontal domains). For some short duration regional flights (less than 1 ½ hours), the data latency can be dependent on arrival on the ground and transmission of data from the arrival location. The data shall be delivered to the NWS in separate file collectives.

The maximum acceptable data latency for regional carriers in CONUS, Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico is 15 minutes. The maximum acceptable data latency for international domains is 3 hours for international flights that are operating in areas outside of air-ground downlink communications.

The contractor shall use a file structure consistent with currently existing aircraft data contracts and accepted data security standards for aircraft data, taking into account requirements from participating airlines and the Government.

* Aircraft observation collectives shall be delivered to the NWS MADIS system every 5 minutes containing all new observations received since the previous message collective was delivered to the NWS TOC.

e. Horizontal Domain

The entire globe. See Section IV for further requirements pertaining to data sources and communications pathways.

f. Vertical Domain

The troposphere, including the jet level, typically 0- 12.5 km (40,000 ft).

g. En-Route Data

Observations along the flight track, at approximately the same flight level meet WMO requirements and are secondary in importance to ascent and descent sounding data. Observations spacing shall be between 1-60 minutes frequency but most desirably at the WMO default of 7 minutes, corresponding to approximately 100 km spacing.

h. Sounding data

High vertical resolution is important in the lower level of the atmosphere to detect indictors of severe weather. Vertically stacked data collected during aircraft ascent and descent can provide atmospheric profiles or atmospheric soundings and are the primary requirement, especially those with vertical density meeting WMO standards.

If possible, vertical sounding resolution on ascent shall be every 5-10 hPa (3-20 sec) for the lowest 100 hPa and every 25-50 (20-60 sec) above.

i. Data Restrictions

The government requires the data to be made available without restrictions that permit compliance with WMO Resolution 40. For entities that are not members of WMO (e.g., private sector data users), the data shall be made available only after 48 hours from the valid time of the observations.

j. Communication Interfaces

The contractor shall utilize software interfaces that enable efficient transmission of aircraft observations, coding of data and dissemination of observations through to the NWS. Data exchange between the Contractor and the NWS MADIS system shall adhere to NOAA communications protocols and standards. The contractor shall support the ability of the NWS to monitor circuit status between NOAA and the contractor. The contractor shall deliver the data in collectives (BUFR format) sent to NOAA through MADIS, which resides within the NWS operational Integrated Dissemination (IDP) framework.

F. Other Requirements

i. The contractor shall establish and coordinate partnerships with airlines to provide observational data meeting all requirements listed above as necessary to provide deliverables as outlined in Section IV below.

IV. Deliverables

a. Aircraft observations, with accuracies meeting requirements of atmospheric temperature, wind, pressure and location shall be delivered to the National Weather Service to meet latency requirements as specified in this SOW and documents described in Table 1.

b. Sounding and en-route observations shall be collected the following sources and geographical domains (RA refers to the World Meteorological Organizations

“Regional Associations”; see http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/dra/regional_offices.php).

i. North, Central, and South America, including the Caribbean (MDCRS) (RA- III and IV)

ii. Trans-oceanic and intracontinental routes (ADS-C, see subsection c below)

iii. Africa (MDCRS) (RA-I)

iv. Central and Eastern Asia (MDCRS) (RA-II, RA-V)

v. Europe (MDCRS) (RA-VI)

c. Observations, described in Section 3 of this SOW shall be from the following sources and providers through subcontractual relationships with airlines.

i. MDCRS observations, including vertical soundings and en-route data, from major airlines based in the United States with routes mostly within the Continental United States (CONUS), but with limited routes and data reporting between the CONUS and anywhere else on the globe.

ii. MDCRS observations, including vertical soundings and en route data, from airlines based both within and outside the United States with routes and reporting mostly from airspace outside the CONUS, over all regions of the globe as defined in Section b above.

iii. ADS-C en-route observations from airlines operating along transoceanic and intracontinental routes, excluding B-787 airframe and smaller/charter/non-flagged aircraft, which are known to have major accuracy limitations with wind observations.

d. Observations shall be formatted in compliance with WMO standards and this SOW.

e. There shall be data management capabilities and communication interfaces in place to ensure efficient and effective encoding and delivery of the aircraft meteorological observations from the aircraft to a ground monitoring/processing center and then onwards to distribution to the government using the required protocols and formats as stated in this SOW. The contractor shall have a mechanism in place for notifying the government in real-time of any outages in the communication systems as described in Section III of this SOW.

f. The Contractor shall provide an annual performance report and semi-annual technical program reviews with an agenda developed in consultation with the Government.

Future opportunities for expansion of the data collection should be part of the semi-annual technical review.

V. Data Volume

This section contains a table with the estimated minimum amounts of data that the Contractor shall deliver to the Government. Please note that these are estimates only, as data volumes will fluctuate from day-to-day and month-to month due to changes in airline routing, weather, and business and servicing models, among other factors. The cost to the government for each data type shall be a firm fixed price that does not fluctuate with temporal changes in data volume.

Table 2. Data volume

Observation Type Estimated Annual Data

Units Delivered

Year 1

Year 2 Year 3

MDCRS (US-based Airlines) with data concentrated over the CONUS, and with limited data from US-based carriers reporting from international airspace

Ascent and descent soundings per year and en route data

1,700,000 soundings per year plus en route data

1,700,000 soundings per year plus en route data

1,700,000 soundings per year plus en route data

MDCRS (US-based and non US-based Airlines) with data concentrated mostly outside the CONUS, including over oceans where MDCRS communications pathways are available

Ascent and descent soundings per year and en route data

2,000,000 soundings per year plus en route data

2,000,000 soundings per year plus en route data

2,000,000 soundings per year plus en route data

*ADS-C All data available from approximately 3000 aircraft, excluding B- 787s and smaller/non-flagged airframes

*The volume of ADS-C data can change substantially with time but the total number of aircraft supplying that data is relatively fixed.