SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE.pdf

SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE

Federal Highway Administration Intersection Safety System (ISS) Prototyping

THIS IS A SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE, RELEASED PURSUANT TO FEDERAL

ACQUISITION REGULATION (FAR) PART 10: MARKET RESEARCH.

This Sources Sought Notice is issued for informational, market research, and planning purposes only and does not commit the Government to any further contract actions, i.e., solicitation and/or contract.

Respondents are advised that the United States (U.S.) Government will not pay for any information or administrative cost incurred in responding to this Sources Sought Notice. Not responding to this Sources Sought Notice does not preclude participation in any future solicitation that may be issued.

Responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the U.S. Government to form a binding contract.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) / Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is conducting market research to identify organizations to provide Intersection Safety System (ISS) Prototypes.

TITLE: Intersection Safety System (ISS) Prototyping

Acquisition history: In January 2025, USDOT concluded a two-stage prize competition, the Intersection Safety Challenge, examining the potential to improve intersection safety through innovation in machine sensing and perception, data fusion, trajectory and path prediction. Building upon insights and lessons learned from the Challenge, as well as concurrent advancements in academia/industry, USDOT is currently considering an ISS prototyping activity. Note that ISS prototyping is envisioned as a new procurement open to all eligible entities, regardless of participation in the precursor Intersection Safety Challenge.

Contracting Office Address:

Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration Office of Acquisition & Grants Management 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20590

Place of Performance:

Work will be performed off-site.

BACKGROUND:

In alignment with FHWA’s mission to improve intersection safety, Contractors use currently available data sources to assess and characterize observed unsafe intersection safety conditions. Contractors then posit a specific high-priority safety problem (some combination of location/geometry, weather/visibility, road user demand conditions, and observed road user behavior) to be addressed by a prototype ISS. ISSs are anticipated to use sensor fusion and artificial intelligence-based decision-making to identify, predict, and mitigate unsafe conditions involving vehicles and other road users in real time.

Use cases and scenarios that reflect these high-value safety issues are then used to inform the contractor team in the development of a detailed experimental plan to assess their ISS (informed in part by a government-provided high-level experimental plan that includes a description of required outputs/measures of effectiveness). Note that contractor teams are expected to share data obtained during the experiment, and later structure/process and share these data. Details regarding data sharing are included in the experimental plan.

Within a configurable controlled environment, the prototype ISS is tested against the detailed experimental plan to answer key research questions related to conflict prediction and mitigation (see below). Data resulting from the experiments are analyzed in relation to the key research questions, and a report summarizing all findings is produced. The contractor team is required to demonstrate the ISS operating in real-time within the controlled environment for a delegation of USDOT subject matter experts. This demonstration is intended to show the nature and timing of strategies used to address unsafe conditions and mitigate individual conflicts.

If initial assessments of ISS prototype utility are obtained in controlled testing, Contractors deploy tailored systems based on their ISS prototype in multiple real-world intersections. After installation, these tailored, observe-only ISS deployments will collect data, predict conflicts, and identify/anticipate unsafe conditions. Selected conflict scenarios, observed in the ISS deployments, will be approximated in a controlled environment to assess the practicality and potential benefit of real-time mitigation. If convincing evidence is identified that some or all potential real-time mitigating actions can be introduced in an operational state in some or all deployed ISS locations with acceptable risk, then real-time mitigation may be introduced. Contractors assess the potential impacts of ISS deployment as well as the potential benefit of broader ISS deployment.

DRAFT SCOPE OF WORK

1.1 PURPOSE

Non-personal services contract to provide ISS prototype systems to the USDOT/FHWA.

1.2 OBJECTIVE

The objective of this Contract is to acquire ISS prototypes to assess the potential benefit and feasibility of broader ISS deployment to address high-value real-world intersection safety issues.

DETAILED REQUIREMENT

The Contractor Teams shall develop and test ISS prototype systems within a controlled environment/testbed. Further, Contractors must design these ISS prototypes to address high-value real-world intersection safety issues identified by a public sector partner. Note, any contractor team must have both:

a public sector partner that is interested in piloting an ISS solution, and access to a configurable controlled environment test bed

ISS prototyping will be conducted in two phases: Phase 1, wherein prototype systems are developed and tested within a controlled environment; and Phase 2 wherein prototypes are refined and assessed within an operational environment.

Phase 1, the government seeks ISS prototypes capable of:

Predicting individual conflicts in real-time o Conflicts are situations wherein the risk of imminent collision among specific nearby road users is high.

Identifying conflicts and collisions in real-time to characterize unsafe conditions o Unsafe conditions reflect more general operational conditions under which an unacceptably high rate of conflicts and collisions has been observed in the past.

Implementing practical mitigation strategies targeting high-value use cases and unsafe conditions, e.g., low visibility (night/fog/weather), high speed road user use cases, variable vulnerable road user demand.

o Mitigating strategies may include the real-time modification of intersection control and/or the issuance of warnings.

Key Research Questions, Phase 1:

Conflicts. Can an ISS reliably predict conflicts among vehicles and vulnerable road users?

o How far in advance can conflicts be predicted?

o Under what conditions can reliable conflict predictions be made?

Unsafe Conditions. Can an ISS reliably identify conflicts and characterize unsafe conditions?

o What types of unsafe conditions can be reliably identified or anticipated?

o How quickly can unsafe conditions be reliably identified or anticipated?

Mitigating Strategies. Can an ISS take meaningful mitigating actions, either in the form of warnings or changes to intersection control, to mitigate conflicts and/or unsafe conditions?

o Can changes to intersection control be implemented in real-time to mitigate unsafe conditions (e.g., eliminating permissive vehicle turning movements traversing busy crosswalks)? What changes to control are most effective?

o Can warnings be issued in real-time to mitigate conflicts? What types of warnings are most effective (e.g., visual, auditory, haptic)?

o Can modifications to intersection control be utilized to mitigate individual conflicts (e.g., delay the illumination of a WALK signal until all approaching vehicles have safely cleared the crosswalk)?

o What are potential safety and congestion-reduction impacts resulting from these mitigating strategies?

TASK STRUCTURE

Task 1-1: Project Management Task 1-2: Concept of Operations Task 1-3: Experimental Design Task 1-4: Iterative Prototype Development and Testing Task 1-5: Prototype Demonstration Task 1-6: Operational Readiness Assessment Task 1-7: Code/Data Sharing

In Phase 2, the government seeks an enhanced ISS prototype with the following attributes:

Rapidly installed and calibrated for operation in a real-world network Enhancements to warnings and other unsafe condition mitigations iteratively tested in a controlled environment based on data collected from deployed ISS prototypes Assessed based on findings from controlled environment testing and deployment data, including possible operational use of conflict mitigation strategies.

Stage 2B, Key Research Questions:

Can conflict mitigation be safely introduced at an intersection?

o Under what conditions can these be introduced?

What kinds of mitigations can be demonstrated to improve safety?

Is the ISS prototype potentially cost-effective?

o If so, under what conditions?

Is broader ISS deployment feasible and/or desirable based on the performance of the ISS prototype?

PHASE II. PROTOTYPE REFINEMENT AND ASSESSMENT

Task 2-1: Project Management Task 2-2: Site Engagement and ISS Prototype Deployment Task 2-3: Operational Scenario Generation Task 2-4: Prototype Refinement and Controlled Environment Validation Task 2-5: Field Deployment and Demonstration Task 2-6: Deployment Readiness Assessment Task 2-7: Code/Data Sharing

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Interested vendors should submit a brief capabilities statement package (no more than 15 pages in length, single-sided, single-spaced, 12-point font minimum, Times New Roman) to the contracting office demonstrating capability to meet FHWA’s requirements. Vendor responses shall include the following information:

1) Company Name, Company Address, Point of Contact, Title, Telephone Number, e-mail Address, and SAM UEI number.

2) Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) Contract Number and SINs, if applicable

3) Prior/current experience performing efforts of similar scope and technical nature within the last three years, including contract number, federal customers, indication of whether as a prime or subcontractor, contract amount, Government point of contact with current telephone number and email, and a brief description of how the referenced requirement relates to the services described herein.

Interested businesses shall submit responses electronically to the Contract Specialist, Alicia Dallas in Microsoft Word or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) at Alicia.Dallas@dot.gov and cc: HCFA-23SRI@dot.gov no later than 1300 Eastern on May 9, 2025.

Proprietary information submitted in response to this Sources Sought Notice will be protected from unauthorized disclosure as required by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). All proprietary markings should be clearly delineated. The respondent shall identify where data is restricted by proprietary or other rights and mark it accordingly.

All responses must be sufficient to permit agency analysis to determine business’ capability to meet requirements. Responses may include links or web addresses that demonstrate evidence of technical expertise.