SOURCES SOUGHT
A -- Information Fusion and Understanding
- Notice Date
- 5/23/2006
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541710
— Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences
- Contracting Office
- Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command, AFRL - Rome Research Site, AFRL/Information Directorate 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, NY, 13441-4514
- ZIP Code
- 13441-4514
- Solicitation Number
- FA8750-06-R-0172
- Description
- Description. The Air Force Research Laboratory, Rome Research Site (RSS) is seeking capable small business sources to perform research and development activities in the area of Information Fusion and Understanding. The Information Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory, RRS, defines Information Fusion and Understanding (IFU) as a continuous process that provides world-wide situational awareness in order to enable decision superiority. In the broadest sense it consists of combining information to estimate or predict the state of some aspect of the universe. The IFU process is further characterized by a continuous refinement of estimates and assessments, and by the evaluation of the need for additional sources, or modifications of the process itself, to achieve improved results. This effort supports modern military and homeland security operations by developing revolutionary decision-aiding capabilities to capture, manage, exploit, reason, and combine/fuse critical time sensitive information from a variety of sources. The scope of this effort consists of research, development, integration, testing, demonstration, fielding, and Operations and Maintenance (O&M) for new and innovative technologies and concepts to enable a continuous assessment of global conditions and events. This innovative technology will be applied to assemble actionable information from multiple data sources in order to establish and maintain battle space situational awareness and understanding. This includes an understanding of adversarial capabilities and intent and the ability to locate, identify, track, and observe/monitor all friendly, enemy, non-friendly, and nonaligned forces/ actors anywhere/anytime in near real-time. Specifically this effort will investigate technological approaches to help achieve a heighten state of shared situational awareness, understanding and knowledge among all elements of a Joint force, in conjunction with Allied and coalition partners. The goal is to employ new innovative technology concepts to help achieve situational dominance and dramatically increase survivability, lethality, speed, timeliness, and responsiveness. Innovative fusion technologies and capabilities will be developed and delivered using multiple strategic, tactical, and intelligence sources to identify and overcome critical weaknesses, and enable the warfighter to proactively anticipate, find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess any target, any where, at any time. New approaches, techniques, and the development of software tools will be accomplished to provided adaptive multi-platform, multi-level, multi-intelligence reasoning and fusion systems to support the needs of today's warfighter. New and novel approaches will be researched to permit the aggregation of data from multiple sources to support reasoning, visualization, and collaboration within the battle space of special area of interest. Advanced multi-intelligence, multi-level data fusion architectures will be investigated and applied for network-based dynamic distributed systems or conventional standalone centralized systems. Architectures will be based on open standards to provide plug and play capability. The fusion architectures will be developed to provide the ability to support multiple fusion algorithms and an adaptive information fusion management process. This effort will also explore innovative technologies and concepts to enable situation assessment and impact assessment, also referred to as higher levels of fusion. These higher levels of fusion consider object and event grouping, associations, and trends across space and time. Concepts will be developed to consider the dynamics of semantic information networks, sculpted by associative learning laws in conjunction with existing knowledge sub-nets and human-in-the-loop guidance. Complementary approaches involving genetic, statistical, model-based, and rule-based methods will be applied to create an information fusion system that addresses the needs of the decision maker. Research and Development of Knowledge Discovery technologies will be investigated to enable the realization of computationally intelligent systems for predictive situational awareness, complex reasoning, and situation understanding. This effort will help provide an integrated suite of tools and techniques to empower the warfighter, from the Commander down to each combatant, with a comprehensive knowledge of the battle space in support of their decision-making process. Techniques for retrieval, extraction, authoring and management of information will be investigated. Innovative techniques and processes that push the envelope of performance of reasoning engines, in terms of the scale of the problems that can be dealt with and the speed and correctness of reasoning will also be studied. Novel methods that extend the breath of reasoning to deal with uncertain and dynamic environments where the knowledge base is characterized by uncertain and temporally changing information beliefs about the environment will be considered. Approaches for discovering relevant linkages between entities, reasoning about different levels of abstraction, classifying the emerging and suspected instances of patterns of interest, and reasoning with multiple hypotheses and with uncertainty will be researched. Techniques will be developed to enable computational systems the ability to reason explicitly about what it knows, what it doesn't know, and what it needs to know in order to learn. Finally this effort will support an environment for the integration of the Information Fusion and Understanding technology for the purposes of functional assessment, performance testing, evaluation, transition, and fielded support to operational units. Operations and maintenance actions will be needed to provide Information Fusion and Understanding technical support to existing customers and to new customer sites after transition. In the course of performance, the support personnel will interface with various DoD and Government agencies through visits and electronic means, and technical visits that will take place at various sites, worldwide. Personnel will also provide technical effort to AFRL/IFE to assist in the analysis, design, research and development, integration, testing, and evaluation. Anticipated deliverables include software, technical documentation, and training. A Cost-Plus-Fixed Fee, Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) ? Completion type contract is contemplated with an ordering period of sixty (60) months. Foreign participation is excluded at the prime contractor level. Multiple Awards are anticipated. The maximum contemplated ordering amount for all awards is a total of $49,900,000. The prime contractor and/or system integrators for this contract must have Top Secret SCI security clearances at the time of the award. Responses to this sources sought are requested from small businesses and will be used for market research purposes and possible set-aside. Should the determination be made to select this as a small business set-aside, another notice will be posted reflecting such. The North American Industry Classification Systems (NAICS) code for this acquisition is 541710 and the size standard for small business is 500 employees. Large businesses are encouraged to submit emails of intent should this effort not be selected as a small business set-aside. Respondents to this announcement should indicate whether they are a small business, 8(a) concern, veteran-owned small business, service-disabled veteran-owned small business, HUBZone small business, small disadvantaged business, women-owned business or historically black college or university (HBCU) or minority institution (MI) (as defined by the clause at DFARS 252.226-7000). As discussed at FAR 19.502-2(b)(2), in making R & D small business set-asides, there must be a reasonable expectation that offers will be obtained from at least two responsible small business concerns and also a reasonable expectation of obtaining the best scientific and technological sources consistent with the demands of the proposed acquisition for the best mix of cost, performance, and schedules. The same considerations would apply to any HBCU/MI set-aside. Therefore, respondents should provide a statement of capabilities and information demonstrating management and technical expertise on similar acquisitions and resources necessary to successfully compete for this award. See Numbered Note 25. This information will assist the Air Force in making a set-aside decision. Provide information on at least three (3) contracts for similar work within the past five (5) years. Include complete references, contract titles, dollar values, points of contact and telephone numbers. The Government will evaluate relevant experience information based on (1) information provided by the Offeror, (2) information obtained from the references provided by the respondent, and/or (3) data independently obtained from other Government and commercial sources. Respondents must demonstrate knowledge/expertise in the following areas: network-centric operations, Joint Directors of the Laboratories' Data Fusion Model (data assessment, object assessment, situation awareness, impact assessment, process refinement), information/data fusion, data fusion algorithms, data base mining, multi-level intelligence, multi-level data fusion, fusion architectures, higher level data fusion, complex reasoning, situation understanding, knowledge capture and management, knowledge representation and reasoning, analysis discovery, software development, software specification development, software integration, management, and maintenance, weapon system integration, and fielded system support. Respondents should demonstrate the capability to perform all the scope of work described above; special emphasis should be placed on demonstrating knowledge-expertise in the Information Fusion Technology area. In addition to the statement of capabilities, please provide answers to the following questions: (1) Does your company intend to submit a proposal in response to the upcoming solicitation as a prime contractor? (2) How many people does your company employ? (3) Will you need to hire additional personnel to perform this effort? (4) Is your company's cost accounting system approved by DCAA or DCMC? If not, how would your company financially administer a cost-reimbursement type contract? (5) Are there any other factors concerning your company's ability to perform the upcoming effort that the Air Force should consider? (6) Is your company a foreign-owned/foreign controlled firm and do you contemplate the use of foreign national employees on this effort? (7) Explain how your company will fill the TS SCI positions. The draft Request for Proposal is expected to be posted on the Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOpps) website at http://www.fedbizopps.gov in the fourth quarter of FY2006. The formal solicitation is expected to be released during the first quarter of FY 2007. When it is issued, the entire solicitation will be issued on the FedBizOpps. All prospective offerors are responsible for monitoring this site for the release of all other information pertaining to this solicitation. Technical questions should be directed to the Program Manager via email to Willis.Horth@rl.af.mil or by phone (315)330-3430. Contractural questions should be directed to the Contract Specialist, Ms. E.J. Rena, via email to Emma.Rena@rl.af.mil or by phone at (315) 330-7116. See Numbered Note 26. All statement of capabilities must be addressed to the attention of Janis Norelli, Small Business Specialist, AFRL/IFB, 26 Electronic Parkway, Rome, NY 13441-4514, and must be received by 4:00 P.M. EST, on 19 June 2006. Responses must reference the solicitation number, and contain the respondent's Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) Code, email address, mailing address, and fax number.
- Record
- SN01055425-W 20060525/060523220622 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
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FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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