Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington VA 22203-1714

A -- HIGH PERFORMANCE KNOWLEDGE BASES (HPKB) SOL BAA 96-43 DUE 120296 POC David Gunning, DARPA/ISO, FAX: (703) 696-2203. The goal of the High-Performance Knowledge Base (HPKB) program is to produce the technology needed to enable system developers to rapidly (within months) construct large (100K-1M axiom/rule/frame) knowledge-bases that provide comprehensive coverage of topics of interest, are reusable by multiple applications with diverse problem-solving strategies, and are maintainable in rapidly changing environments. It is envisioned that the process for constructing these large, comprehensive, reusable, and maintainable knowledge bases would involve three major steps: Building Foundation Knowledge: creating the foundation knowledge (e.g., selecting the knowledge representation scheme, assembling theories of common knowledge, defining domain-specific terms and concepts) to enable the construction and population of large, comprehensive knowledge bases for particular domains of interest -- by selecting, composing, extending, specializing, and modifying components from a library of reusable ontologies, common domain theories, and generic problem-solving strategies Acquiring Domain Knowledge: constructing and populating a complete knowledge base -- by using the foundation knowledge to generate domain-specific knowledge acquisition, data mining, and information extraction tools -- to enable collaborating teams of domain (non-computer) experts to easily extend the foundation theories, define additional domain theories and problem solving strategies, and acquire domain facts to populate a comprehensive knowledge base covering the domains of interest.Efficient Problem Solving: enabling efficient problem solving -- either by providing efficient inference and reasoning procedures to operate on a complete knowledge base, or by providing tools and techniques to select and transform knowledge from a complete knowledge base into optimized problem-solving modules tailored to the unique requirements of an application. The objective of HPKB is to develop, integrate, and test the technology needed to enable this process, in a four-year development program, beginning in 1997 and running through September, 2000. The intention is to produce, by the end of FY00, alternative knowledge-base development environments, which combine the necessary foundation-building, knowledge-acquisition, and problem-solving technologies into an integrated development environment, and to use those environments to build reusable knowledge-base components for multiple DARPA application projects. The candidate applications are a set of new and on-going DARPA initiatives, all of which are building advanced information systems to improve some aspect of military operations, and all of which need knowledge-rich components to reason about and understand the battlefield or crisis situation. The candidate projects are: Dynamic Multi-user Information Fusion (DMIF), Joint Task Force (JTF) Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD), Technology Development for the Joint Force Air Component Commander (JFACC), Advanced Logistics Program (ALP), Battlefield Awareness Data Dissemination (BADD), and Information Gathering, Processing and Analyses in Support of Crisis Management (Project Genoa). The HPKB program intends to produce multiple knowledge-base development environments and exercise them to build knowledge-base components for these applications. The approach for achieving this objective is to: (1) develop individual foundation-building, knowledge-acquisition, and problem-solving technologies, (2) integrate those individual technologies into two or more integrated knowledge-base development environments, (3) develop a set of test ''challenge problems'' which reflect the knowledge-base requirements of the application projects, (4) evaluate the alternative knowledge-base technologies and integrated development environments against those test problems, and, in the process (5) produce knowledge-base components for use by the application projects. These efforts will occur in parallel, with more effort initially going into tasks #1 and #2 and more effort on task #5 later in the project. The cornerstone of this approach -- the bridge between technology development and application -- is the set of ''challenge problems'' which will be used to focus research and development efforts and measure the effectiveness of alternative technical approaches. Challenge problem test sets will be developed to be representative of knowledge-base requirements from the candidate applications. These test sets will be used as the basis for annual evaluations of the developing technology. Developers will be asked to build test knowledge bases to satisfy specific test problem specifications. As a part of the evaluation, the completeness and correctness of the developed knowledge base will be measured, as well as the time required to build the knowledge base and the ease of modifying the knowledge base to assimilate new or changed knowledge. The results of the evaluation will be reported and discussed in a subsequent conference and used to stimulate sharing and interchange of promising technical approaches among the research community. These challenge problems have not been defined in detail, nor have the specific evaluation metrics or evaluation processes, DARPA is also soliciting, in this BAA, proposals to define, develop, and maintain the challenge problem test sets for the HPKB program. Successful proposals in the technology development and integration category will be expected to propose effort to participate in the annual challenge problem evaluations. It is estimated that the evaluation will require development teams to spend one month during each annual evaluation, using their newly developed tools and techniques to build test knowledge bases to satisfy the specified challenge problems. The first evaluation will be held approximately one year after contract award. After an initial analysis of the candidate applications, two classes of challenge problems were identified that will be refined to create the specific challenge problem test sets. The two challenge problems will be based on developing: (1) comprehensive battlefield knowledge (e.g., terrain characteristics, force structures, military organizations, troop movements, military strategy, transportation and logistics operations) to provide in-depth reasoning to support situation assessment, air campaign planning, and logistics planning, and (2) general knowledge for information retrieval and intelligence analysis, involving the development of a broader, more general knowledge base, suited for information retrieval from a wide variety of general information sources, such as the Internet. Through these challenge problems, HPKB technology developers will build and test knowledge-base tools and use them to incrementally build products for possible insertion into the application projects. To support this process DARPA is soliciting, under this BAA, one, two, or three year proposals in the following two categories: (1) Knowledge-Base Technology Development and Integration, to develop the individual foundation-building, knowledge-acquisition, and problem-solving technologies, as well as combine those technologies into integrated knowledge-base development environments, and (2) Challenge Problem Development and Evaluation Management, to define, develop, and maintain the challenge problem test sets, as well as defining and managing the annual evaluation process and evaluation conferences. GENERAL INFORMATION. An industry briefing will be held on 11 OCT 1996. Final proposals are due on 2 DEC 1996. Proposers must submit an original and 10 copies of full proposals to DARPA/ISO, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714, (ATTN: BAA 96-43) by 4:00 PM, 2 DEC 1996, in order to be considered. Proposers must obtain a pamphlet, BAA 96-43 Proposer Information, which provides further information on areas of interest, the submission, evaluation, funding processes, and proposal formats. This pamphlet may be obtained by electronic mail, world-wide web, or mail request to the administrative contact address given below. Proposals not meeting the format described in the pamphlet may not be reviewed. This notice, in conjunction with the pamphlet BAA 96-43 Proposer Information, constitutes the total BAA. No additional information is available, nor will a formal RFP or other solicitation regarding this announcement be issued. Requests for same will be disregarded. The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some, or none of the proposals received. All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit a proposal which shall be considered. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Minority Institutions (MI) are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals, however, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for HBCU and MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or several areas of research in this area of research. Awards made under this BAA are subject to the provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 9.5, Organizational Conflict of Interest. All offerors and proposed subcontractors must affirmatively state whether they are supporting any DARPA technical office(s) through an active contract or subcontract. All affirmations must state which office(s) the offeror supports, and identify the prime contract number. Affirmations should be furnished at the time of proposal submission. All facts relevant to the existence or potential existence of organizational conflicts of interest, as that term is defined in FAR 9.501, must be disclosed. This disclosure shall include a description of the action the Contractor has taken, or proposes to take, to avoid, neutralize or mitigate such conflict. Evaluation of proposals will be accomplished through a technical review of each proposal using the following criteria, which are listed in descending order of relative importance: (1) innovativeness of proposed solutions to meet program objectives, (2) soundness of technical approach, (3) quality, quantity, and experience of technical personnel, (4) soundness of program plan and SOW, (5) cost realism. The annual budget available to fund proposals from this BAA is approximately $8M per year. It is estimated that $3-4M per year will be available for individual technology developments, $2-4M for integrated development environments, and $1-2M on developing and managing the challenge problem evaluations. It is expected that individual technology efforts will range from $200K to $600K per year, and that the integration efforts would range from $1M to $2M per year, depending on the amount of component technology development included. Administrative addresses for this BAA: All administrative correspondence and questions on this solicitation, including requests for information on how to submit a proposal to this BAA, should be directed to one of the administrative addresses below, e-mail or fax is preferred. DARPA intends to use electronic mail and fax for correspondence regarding BAA 96-43. Proposals shall not be submitted by fax, any so sent will be disregarded. Fax: (703) 696-2203, Addressed to: David Gunning, DARPA/ISO, BAA 96-43, Electronic Mail: baa96-43@darpa.mil, Electronic File Retrieval: http://www.darpa.mil/baa/#iso, Mail:DARPA/ISO,ATTN: BAA 96-43, 3701N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. SPONSOR: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714 SUBFILE: PSE (U.S. GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENTS, SERVICES) SECTION HEADING: A Research and Development (0275)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0002 19961002\A-0002.SOL)