RFP_Attachment 1 - SOW.docx

"Source Selection Information—See FAR Subparts 2.101 and 3.104-4"

Ver. 9JUN2025 Attachment 1 – Statement of Work

STATEMENT OF WORK

NOAA NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE

COMMERCIAL DATA PROGRAM

NATIONAL MESONET PROGRAM

1.0 Background

In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released Observing Weather and Climate from the Ground Up: A Nationwide Network of Networks. This NAS report provides a framework for filling gaps in the Federal Government’s meteorological, hydrologic and related environmental observing capabilities, to enable significantly improved forecasts and warnings, especially for high-impact, local-scale weather events. The framework specifies that the National Weather Service (NWS) and the Federal Government should effectively leverage observing networks that are owned and operated by nonfederal parties (e.g., the states, academia, and the private sector), in addition to deploying new federal systems.

In response to the NAS, the NWS began the National Mesonet Program (NMP) in Fiscal Year 2009. The program initially served as a mechanism for purchasing data from a small number of nonfederal surface observing networks (“mesonets”) located mostly in the south-central U.S operated by state governments and one private-sector company providing nationwide surface coverage. The NMP has since evolved into NWS’s primary program for purchasing nonfederal data from a wide variety of observing networks spanning various observing systems, domains, technologies and platforms, from local to global in coverage, and extending beyond the original meaning of “mesonet.” This mix includes: networks operating in all 50 states providing surface meteorological observations and subsurface soil moisture/temperature; ground-based remote sensing providing vertical profiles of wind, temperature and humidity; aircraft-based observations providing vertical profiles; commercial radiosondes (“weather balloons”); commercial radars supplementing NWS’s federal NEXRAD 88-D network; near-shore coastal/marine observations; and observations from ships and buoys on the high seas providing surface meteorology and surface and subsurface oceanic variables (e.g. wave heights/spectra, ocean currents and sea surface and subsurface temperature).

This growth in recent years from a program primarily procuring surface meteorological data into a broad-based commercial observations program has resulted from legislative direction, including in annual appropriations and The Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017 (“2017 Weather Act”). More recently, draft legislation reauthorizing the 2017 Weather Act would authorize the Commercial Data Program (CDP) consisting of several program elements, including a standalone authorization for the NMP itself, and codifying the NMP as the flagship and largest component of the CDP, both in terms of the authorized budget and the variety of observing systems from which the program is directed to procure commercial data.

As detailed in this Statement of Work (SOW), NWS, through the CDP-NMP, seeks to procure data from nonfederal networks covering an expansive range of geographic/observable domains and types of observing systems/networks, including but not limited to those listed above.

Extending NWS’s Observing System Capabilities and Filling Gaps

The CDP enables NWS to extend and increase its observing capabilities by leveraging observations from nonfederal networks whose observing platforms may be deployed at significantly closer spacing (smaller distance between platforms) than NWS’s own platforms, or in areas where NWS does not operate its own platforms. The CDP further facilitates access to specific types of networks and observations without analogous federal capabilities. All these types of nonfederal platforms allow NWS to observe meteorological, hydrological, oceanic, and other environmental variables with much greater reach, expanse, and precision than would otherwise be possible with NWS’s federal systems and platforms alone.

For all types of observations that are part of the broader CDP-NMP mix, NWS will leverage only those networks that aspire to national and international standards for siting, operations, and provision of high-quality data that is suitable to both NWS applications and the breadth of applications of observations across the broader weather enterprise.

Ingest, Processing, Dissemination: Relevant Systems and Applications

For most of the 15-year history of the NMP, the federal Meteorological Analysis and Data Ingest System (MADIS) has been the primary conduit for delivery and receipt of nonfederal data provided by NMP partners. MADIS is an operational NWS ingest and dissemination system that provides a pathway into NWS for data streams from many nonfederal networks, and serves as a repository for data and metadata for partner networks. MADIS collects nonfederal observations and their metadata in real time, and makes the information accessible to NWS field offices that use these observations in the forecast and warning process, and to downstream forecast and warning systems, such as data assimilation and numerical weather prediction. MADIS has also provided data access services for users who are external to NWS, in the broader weather enterprise, including many nonfederal partners.

In light of the NMP having evolved into, and being directed to serve, the primary NOAA/NWS CDP program element spanning a large variety of observing systems types, NWS seeks to broaden the scope and mix of systems and applications relevant to the ingest, processing, dissemination, and application of these nonfederal data sources.

NWS seeks data-related services to be provided by commercial cloud-based capabilities analogous to MADIS for meeting data and data-related services related requirements heretofore met only by interfacing with and delivering data to the federal MADIS system. Such analogous capabilities should serve key NWS downstream applications and systems that are highly dependent on the federal MADIS system including, but not necessarily limited to, the Advanced Weather Information Processing System (AWIPS) and the Multi-Radar Multi Sensor System (MRMS). Analogous commercial capabilities are sought to provide the data services heretofore provided by the federal MADIS, processing and providing data streams to the NWS Gateway, and to downstream applications highly reliant on nonfederal data streams.

This SOW extends solely to services required to provide data to the government. It does not extend to operation of the federal MADIS functionality itself, provision of any IT systems to the government, or performance within federal IT systems.

Contracting Structure

This SOW provides requirements for sources at the “prime” contracting level. It is expected that the prime contractor will form numerous subcontracting relationships to meet the requirements of this SOW, particularly in the domain of the owners and operators of nonfederal observing networks that are the original sources of the observational data. The prime contractor will hold the contract with the government, ensure coordination among the subcontractors to meet data and data-related services requirements, and provide the interface between the government and the subcontractors for administrative functions such as payment and invoicing.

2.0 Requirements

The contractor shall meet all requirements, as specified below in Section 2.1, Section 2.2, Section 2.3, Section 2.4 and Section 2.5 and as directed in individual Task Orders.

2.1 Data Requirements

NWS requires the contractor to provide the data from various platforms in commercial networks as described above in Section 1.0 Background and further defined below as:

2.1.1 Surface Meteorology over Land: In-Situ meteorological observations (wind, temperature, moisture, pressure, precipitation) from fixed-location platforms primarily in the lowest 10 meters of the atmosphere, and, where available at these observing stations, soil moisture, soil temperature, solar radiation, road-surface temperature and related pavement parameters. This shall include, where available, in-situ observations from “tall towers” that extend to greater than 10 meters above ground level.

2.1.2 Ground-Based Vertical Profilers Utilizing Remote Sensing: Temperature, moisture, wind speed and direction, and other related meteorological fields and associated parameters, through the vertical extent of the troposphere, including at multiple heights and derived with fixed-location ground-based remote sensing technologies (“vertical profilers”).

2.1.3 Aircraft-Based Observations: Vertical profiles of temperature, moisture, wind speed and direction, and related fields, on ascent and descent paths of aircraft in the vicinity of airports and en route data where available, including from in situ sensors mounted on aircraft and derived methods.

2.1.4 Rawinsondes and Other Aerial Systems: Vertical profiles of temperature, moisture, wind speed and direction, and related fields, through the depth of the troposphere to the maximum altitudes possible from commercially operated “weather balloons” and Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS). Note: UAS, as defined here, does not include large, long-range, fixed-wing aircraft providing long-range, targeted surveillance mission of specific phenomena; it instead covers only smaller UAS, primarily rotary wing, providing monitoring vertical profiles of the aforementioned variables at an approximately fixed location in the horizontal.

2.1.5 Marine and Oceanic: Observations of surface meteorology and ocean surface variables (e.g., wave heights/spectra, ocean currents and sea surface and subsurface temperature) from fixed, moored, piloted and drifting platforms, including but not limited to ships and buoys.

2.1.6 Ground Based Radars: All available data including reflectivity, velocity, derived data and fields, from X-, S-, or C-Band radars providing coverage.

2.1.7 Remote and Unique Data: Data from surface mesonets as generally defined in Section 2.1.1 that are sourced from platforms in US states and territories outside the continental United States, requiring unusually complex and high-cost maintenance procedures.

2.1.8 Additional data from networks that are not already providing data to NWS via the CDP-NMP as defined above or from emergent observations platforms, and in accordance with the direction of the aforementioned 2017 Weather Act and future legislative direction for the CDP to expand the program to new data types, observing domains, and platforms.

2.1.9 Aggregation and provision to the government of observational data from publicly available networks that are not directly subcontracted, including collection, formatting, metadata handling, and ingest and dissemination.

2.2 Data-Related Services Requirements

The contractor shall provide the following services related to data provision and analysis. These requirements do not extend to provision of IT capabilities to the government or IT work within government IT capabilities. The contractor shall maintain any non-governmental capabilities to meet these requirements and deliver to the government services as directed and applicable for a given data source or service, following established processes and protocols.

These services shall be inherent in the price of data provided to the government via individual Task Orders as defined by Section 2.1.

2.2.1 The contractor shall deliver data via a commercial cloud-based capability analogous to MADIS for provision of nonfederal data to the federal MADIS, the NWS Gateway, AWIPS, MRMS, and other systems as directed and appropriate for a given data stream, including support services for visualization and display, integration, processing, provision, and utilization of data in those systems. Where the federal MADIS serves downstream NWS systems and operations, this capability shall serve as a backup for data provision/ingest for those downstream systems, and further provide a data visualization/display capability. This system shall provide quality control and assurance checks consistent with procedures as defined in the references below, particularly National Academy of Sciences (2009). This service shall include a helpdesk function for partner networks and users of nonfederal data, analogous to what has historically been provided by the NWS “MADIS Helpdesk.” The Helpdesk is an operational entity of contractor support personnel in NWS who are available during normal working hours to answer inquiries from data providers and data users to access and navigate the system, provide and maintain users accounts for users, and assist both in troubleshooting technical matters related to provision and access to data.

2.2.2 At the direction of the government, the contractor shall undertake individual “pilot projects” supporting NWS in the evaluation of new commercial data streams for application in its forecast and warning mission and associated systems and processes. These pilot projects may include but are not limited to:

· Optimization analyses to determine geographical configuration of commercial data sources, including the horizontal and vertical resolution of measurements, the observable variables, and the geographical locations of observing sites optimally suited to NWS’s mission needs for commercial data, in the context of its overall federal and commercial observing systems footprint

· Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) and Observing Systems Experiments (OSEs) to assess the skill impact of candidate new commercial data streams in Data Assimilation and Numerical Weather Prediction.

2.2.3 When pilot projects provide evidence that additional sites or measurements would benefit the NWS mission, the government may request establishment of new sites or measurements within partner networks to provide observational data per Section 2.1.

2.3 Geographical Requirements

2.3.1 For a given nonfederal network providing data, data is required extending to the full horizontal and vertical domain of the network and its observing range, with specific quantities including number of platforms and data volumes as otherwise specified in individual delivery orders. For surface data in Section 2.1.1, this domain shall be limited to the geographic domain within the United States and its territories covered by a given network.

2.4 Performance Requirements

The contractor shall:

2.4.1 Coordinate and establish subcontracts with networks that use standards (as defined in references supplied in Appendix A, with further details specified as applicable in individual Task Orders) to site and operate observation stations;

2.4.2 Maintain detailed metadata that address the attributes, formats, and standards described in the references in Appendix A. Metadata attributes for individual networks and types of observing systems platforms may be further specified by the government in individual Task Orders as applicable;

2.4.3 Maintain a commercial cloud-based capability analogous to MADIS with 99% uptime substantially similar to the federal MADIS system to process and deliver data to the federal MADIS, NWS Gateway, AWIPS, MRMS, and other systems and users as appropriate in coordination with the government and consistent with Section 2.2.1 above;

2.4.4 Ensure that individual stations have no less than 90.0% availability for all potential reports averaged across all stations over the period of a month, with individual reports provided with a target frequency of one report every five (5) minutes;

2.4.5 Provide the government with physical access to a network’s individual station and data processing facilities within five (5) business days of the government’s request, to enable the government to audit for compliance with requirements;

2.4.6 Provide quarterly status reports to the government within month of the end of each quarter, describing the progress and status in fulfilling data and performance requirements; and

2.4.7 Provide notification to the government when systemwide outages (i.e., an outage across the entirety of a contributing network) of more than one (1) hour occur.

2.5 Additional Requirements

2.5.1 If a contractor provides any observational data from a given platform, all available environmental variables that are available at the time of initial provision thereafter be provided from that platform, consistent with all Performance Requirements in Section 2.4.

2.5.2 The contractor shall demonstrate the legal right to access data from all partner networks (subcontractors) and provide the data to the government, to meet all data related and data services requirements.

2.5.3 The contractor shall demonstrate the ability to provide all data meeting all requirements to the government without a break in service of data currently provided to the government.

2.5.4 Provide notification to the government on requested data rights/licensing categories beyond NOAA only corresponding to Appendix B for each applicable subcontracted network as follows: For requirements in Section 2.1.3, Section 2.1.4, and Section 2.1.5, categories shall include 2 and 2A, and any categories beyond restricted to NOAA only will be negotiated and designated on a case-by-case basis in individual Task Orders. For requirements in Section 2.1.6, categories shall include 3 and 3A, and any categories beyond restricted to NOAA Only will be negotiated and designated on a case-by-case basis in individual Task Orders.

Appendix A *References Fair Weather: Effective Partnerships in Weather and Climate Services; The National Academies; 2003.

Enhancing Metadata Available from MADIS for the National Mesonet; Michael F. Barth, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, Boulder, CO; and P. A. Miller and D. Helms.

Observing Weather and Climate from the Ground Up: A Nationwide Network of Networks; The National Academies; 2009.

Guide to Meteorological Instruments and Methods of Observation (WMO-No. 8):

https://www.weather.gov/media/epz/mesonet/CWOP-WMO8.pdf

Guide on the Global Observing System (WMO-No. 488) http://www.wmo.ch/pages/prog/gcos/documents/gruanmanuals/GOS/488_Guide_2007.pdf

Observing Urban Weather and Climate Using 'Standard' Stations; T. R. Oke Initial Guidance to Obtain Representative Meteorological Observations at Urban Sites, Tim R. Oke https://urban-climate.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Oke_2006_IOM-81-UrbanMetObs.pdf

ISO 19115-1 Environmental Information Metadata Standards:

http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=26020

UNIDATA Metadata Conventions for NetCDF Climate and Forecast (CF) Data:

https://cfconventions.org/cf-conventions/cf-conventions.html

Metadata Encoding Formats: OGC XML/SML – Sensor Model Language:

http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/sensorm

Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Data Management and Communications (DMAC) metadata standards:

https://ioos.noaa.gov/data/data-standards/

*Additional and specific quality standards may be established for requirements in Section 2.1 at the time of award of individual Task Orders.

Appendix B

Data Rights/Licensing Categories

For each network (subcontractor) that provides data to NWS, a data licensing/rights category may be assigned, indicating what groups of users beyond NOAA may have access to data from the network. That is, the category defines to which external (non-NOAA) users NWS may redistribute the raw data and restricts the redistribution beyond that category.

Per this contract, the contractor grants NOAA a perpetual, non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to use, reproduce, archive, and create derived products with the data, in any manner and for any purpose, and to authorize others to do so on its behalf (including other contractors and recipients of financial assistance awards).

Derived products created using data received under this contract are not subject to the data rights provisions in this section or any other contractual, licensing, or intellectual property claims by the contractor, and therefore may be publicly distributed without use restrictions. Derived products include, but are not limited to, all public forecast and warning products, and other routine public mission products, in graphical and text form (including where products display raw data values, such as individual observations in products such as Local Storm Reports or one-time graphical snapshots of observed quantities).

Furthermore, the contractor shall provide pricing for various external data sharing rights per the requirement in Section 2.5.4, including but not limited to the external distribution and use rights described in the categories below.

Category 1: Right to distribute all data to any entity immediately after receipt at NOAA with no restrictions on their use or further distribution, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).

Category 2: Right to distribute all data to U.S. Government agencies, international partners, including but not limited to member states of the World Meteorological Organization, and nonprofit entities and academic entities, immediately after receipt at NOAA, for non-commercial use but not for further distribution (other than to their contractors or affiliates).

Category 2A: In addition to the rights under Category 2, Category 1 rights will apply to all data beginning 48 hours after collection.

Category 3: Right to distribute all data to U.S. Government agencies immediately after receipt at NOAA, for non-commercial use, but not for further distribution (other than to their contractors or affiliates).

Category 3A: In addition to the rights under Category 3, Category 1 rights will apply to all data beginning at 48 hours after collection.

Category 4: Right to distribute all data to nonprofit entities and academic entities, for non-commercial use (other than to their contractors or affiliates).

Category 4A: In addition to the rights under Category 4, Category 1 rights will apply to all data beginning at 48 hours after collection.

When NOAA provides restricted data to a non-NOAA entity, NOAA will inform such recipient of the identified use and distribution restrictions associated with the data rights specified in this contract. If NOAA becomes aware that an entity is not adhering to those restrictions, NOAA will seek to ensure compliance, and if unsuccessful, may terminate the entity’s access to the data. NOAA, however, has no further obligation related to data use by non-NOAA entities. In no event is NOAA liable to the contractor for use or release of contractor data by non-NOAA entities.