NESDIS-IDL-JOFOC__Redacted.pdf

Version 2.0

Source Selection Information – see FAR 2.101 and 3.104

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

FOR AN ORDER EXCEEDING THE SIMPLIFIED ACQUISITION THRESHOLD

(AUTHORITY: FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i))

NEED0000-20-00342

1. Agency and contracting activity. Department of Commerce, NOAA Acquisition and Grants Office (AGO), National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR).

2. Nature and/or description of the action being approved.

Purchase Harris Geospatial Solutions, Inc. Interactive Data Language (IDL) software licenses and maintenance for the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) of the National Oceanic, Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

IDL is a scientific programming language used by NESDIS in support of its mission. It enables users to visualize many different types of complex data in order to provide a better understanding of the data.

This is a justification for an exception to fair opportunity for a follow-on contract to contract

, which provides Interactive Data Language (IDL) software licenses and support, from:

Harris Geospatial Solutions, Inc.

385 Interlocken Crescent, Ste 300 Broomfield, Colorado 80021 Phone:

3. Description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency’s needs (including the estimated value).

Mission Science Requirements

a. An easily useable, compact platform/environment for development coding and visualization.

b. A product to support ABI (Advanced Baseline Imager) calibration and validation.

c. A backbone language for the interactive multisensor snow and ice mapping system (IMS), all

SAR (Satellite Aperture Radar) imagery and applications, and the Hazards Mapping System

(HMS).

d. Program tools to conduct the analyses and studies necessary for ozone product validation, monitoring, trouble-shooting and development.

e. A product for rapid visualization of scientific outputs, including global maps of more than 30 MiRS (Microwave Integrated Retrieval System) retrieval and derived products, as well as validation maps and statistics to determine if products meet accuracy and precision requirements.

f. A product for off line computations, for example eigenanalysis to generate EOFs (Emperical Orthogonal Function).

g. A product to generate high quality images and conduct data analysis in daily Calibration/Validation activity.

h. A product to generate ICVS (Integrated Calibration/Validation System) images in near real time.

i. A product to support calibration/validation and further development of ocean color products from VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on SNPP (Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership) and NOAA-20, as well as some other sensors such as OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat-8 and the Ocean and OLCI (Ocean and Land Colour Instrument) on Sentinel-3A/B.

j. A product to provide Coral Reef Watch products and services to the coral reef community.

k. A product to provide a quick and convenient tool for land product development, validation and monitoring.

l. A product to produce global daily images of all JPSS (Joint Polar Satellite System) related

EDRs (Environmental Data Record) at multiple zoom levels.

How IDL meets these requirements

a. IDL is effectively based on FORTRAN, a primary programming language used in NESDIS.

b. IDL has significant libraries for coded functions.

c. IDL is used to process, graphically display, and analyze mission critical products.

d. The backbone of some NESDIS monitoring and validation is a semi-automated system of IDL codes that creates hundreds of new figures and summary statistics each month.

e. IDL creates the overpass data sets used in the validation comparisons with ground-based assets.

f. IDL facilitates readers and tools for all ozone products that allow interactive exploration of new anomalies or confirm performance as the measurements' behavior changes over time.

g. IDL provides a user-friendly programming interface to allow rapid creation of new software tools and maintenance of existing software tools. Graphics are generally produced quickly and well integrated within the MiRS data processing flow.

h. IDL provides for code testing and debugging using the IDL command line environment. It also allows the use of third party external libraries to realize advanced data analysis/image generation functions.

i. IDL is used for analyzing and imaging results of satellite data processing, and for doing quick simulation and testing of processing procedures before implementing in Fortran or C++.

j. IDL facilitates development of a desktop application, OCDAPS (Ocean Color Data Analysis and Processing System), for ocean color data analysis and visualization. The application has various modules including input, process, and data manipulations etc. With IDL, OCDAPS has the capability to read various formats, including NetCDF, NetCDF4, HDF, HDF5 and standard binary format, and it can also process ocean color data from SDR (Sensor Data Record) to EDR, EDR to Level 3 and merging Level 3 products. With the IDL's mapping function, OCDAPS can also map SDR, EDR and Level 3 data to various map projections. Based on IDL, OCDAPS can visualize SDR, EDR and Level3 data including data quality flags, with very convenient adjustment of the color bar and color scales.

k. IDL facilitates daily work on VIIRS Cal/Val.

l. IDL can be used for batch processing when thousands of granules of data need to be processed, and the performance is good.

m. IDL facilitates almost all data processing, product producing, and data analysis, for Coral Reef

Watch.

n. IDL facilitates the processing of raw data from SCDR (STAR Central Data Repository) and creation of large arrays that are saved as PNG files. IDL is also used for tiling larger images.

NESDIS has a resulting requirement for the continued use of IDL. The current contract which provides IDL licenses and maintenance expires April 30, 2020.

Technical Specifications:

1. Contractor shall provide Harris Geospatial Solutions’ Interactive Data Language (IDL) licenses for NESDIS.

2. Contractor shall provide software maintenance for each license, including all new versions, patches, and security fixes.

3. Each IDL license may be deployed on any supported platform and operating system.

4. Each IDL license may be either node-locked, user-locked, or floating, as supported by the target platform and operating system.

5. Each IDL license may be deployed on infrastructure either on premise at NESDIS, or in

NESDIS commercial cloud environment.

6. Contractor shall provide a mechanism for NESDIS to request and receive licenses as necessary.

7. Contractor shall provide a mechanism enabling the Contractor, and NESDIS, to keep track of the IDL licenses deployed via this contract.

8. Contractor shall allow up to a maximum limit of at least 300 IDL licenses total.

9. Contractor shall provide an option to the government to raise that maximum licenses limit from

300 to unlimited licenses at any point during the contract.

10. The Contractor shall provide basic telephone and email support during normal business hours, Monday through Friday, 8:00am – 5:00pm EST.

Period Of Performance:

5/1/2020 - 4/30/2021 Base Period 5/1/2021 - 4/30/2022 Option Period 1 5/1/2022 - 4/30/2023 Option Period 2 5/1/2023 - 4/30/2024 Option Period 3 5/1/2024 - 4/30/2025 Option Period 4

Contract Type: Firm Fixed Price

4. Authority and supporting rationale. The contracting officer has determined the circumstances of the acquisition meet the following statutory exception under FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i) as supported below:

Only one awardee is capable - FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B) – Only one awardee is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized.

Interactive Data Language (IDL) software licenses and maintenance are developed by, and available only from, Harris Geospatial Solutions, Inc. See attached Sole Source Supplier Statement from Harris Geospatial Solutions, Inc.

Unique or highly specialized capabilities of IDL include:

a. IDL has functions designed for imagery manipulation, processing, with customized GUI interfaces. Any alteration in the current code would need years of co-production with IDL and a new language to prevent mission critical failures in NESDIS products.

b. IDL has done a very good job of keeping their libraries manipulating the required file output formats for NDE, NetCDF, as well as the required IDPS output format, HDF, up to date. They also pay good attention to backward compatibility as they add new features and support their product on different operating systems. Programs created in IDL can interface with other code packages and scripts used in our systems, e.g., Fortran and BASH.

c. Some Python users find that the instability from updates and long run times of Python are negatives. One example was that a mapping package they relied on was removed because it became commercial, and was not found in later versions. They were left trying to write code to duplicate its capabilities.

d. Capabilities provided by IDL are present in Matlab. However, it is unclear if these capabilities are completely duplicated in Python (e.g. Eigen analysis).

e. Some functions are not provided in Matlab.

f. IDL is more convenient than other products to open current remote sensing data formats such as HDF5 and NetCDF. Much re-usable code has been developed in IDL.

g. Some NESDIS tests have determined that Python is relatively slow at creating large imagery files, such as full resolution for some VIIRS.

h. IDL handles both the processing and visualization requirements in one package.

5. Determination by the contracting officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

The IGCE of this contract if fully executed, for unlimited licenses over five years, is consistent with the cost of the contract to which it is a follow-on, for unlimited licenses over five years. Therefore, the contracting officer determines that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

6. Any other facts supporting the justification.

All supporting facts have been documented herein.

7. Actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers that led to the exception to fair opportunity before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services is made.

Other products which might meet the requirements are Python, Fortran, C, and C++, for the processing requirements, plus Mathworks’ Matlab for the visualization requirements. However, NESDIS has invested many person-years developing processes which utilize the IDL scientific programming language because of its data processing and visualization capabilities.

With a planned NESDIS migration from on-premise IT infrastructure, to commercial cloud computing, and the inherent re-working of processes which that brings, especially while utilizing the myriad of cloud services available, NESDIS may be able to migrate from IDL to cloud-based services which can adequately, at least partially, replace the functions which IDL delivers, thus reducing or eliminating the dependency on IDL, by the time a follow-on to this contract is necessary.

8. Technical/Requirements Representative Certification.

I certify this requirement constitutes the Government’s minimum needs and the supporting data provided herein is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

IT Specialist, COR Date

9. Office of General Counsel Concur.

Concur

, Attorney Date

Office of General Counsel

10. Approving Official Determination of Circumstance Applicability.

In accordance with FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(B)(10), the undersigned approving official for this justification hereby determines the circumstance cited above at #4, Authority and supporting rationale, applies to this order.

Contracting Officer’s Certification and Approval

I certify this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Matthew Robertson Date