The mission of the NGA Research Directorate is to deliver future Geospatial-Intelligence (GEOINT) capabilities to users for operational impact.  NGA Research supports the National Security Strategy by solving hard defense and intelligence problems for the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense.

In support of this mission, NGA Research promotes research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines, and transforms these initiatives into disruptive GEOINT capabilities in support of U.S. national security. The BIG-ST BAA invites proposers to submit innovative concepts to address hard GEOINT problems that align to one or more of the following technical domains: (1) Foundational GEOINT, (2) Advanced Phenomenologies, and (3) Analytic Technologies. Throughout the open period of this BAA, posted Topic Calls will specify areas associated with these technical domains.

Each posted Topic Call will provide specific timelines for abstract and proposal submission. Proposers are responsible for maintaining awareness of these Topic Calls and associated timelines for submissions. No submissions shall be accepted to the general solicitation; abstracts and proposals will only be reviewed in response to Topic Calls.

The BIG-ST BAA is a general announcement of NGA’s research interest, including criteria for selecting proposals and soliciting the participation of all offerors capable of satisfying the Government’s needs.

The requests for abstracts and/or proposals are transmitted via Topic Calls that are published separately under the BIG-ST BAA general solicitation at various times during the open period of the general solicitation.

Review the changes to the BIG-ST BAA.

Source: SAM

Time is running out — become a paid subscriber to IC News today, and lock in subscription rates at 2024 prices. You’ll get full access to breaking news from across the IC contracting space, with new articles each weekday.

The post NGA updates BIG-ST BAA in preparation for 2025 appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

NGA’s Research Directorate will conduct a Proposers Day webcast to provide information to potential proposers about the objectives of the Boosting Innovative GEOINT Research Broad Agency Announcement (BIG-R BAA) Topic Three, NGA Research Innovative Seedlings. The Proposers Day will be held via WebEx Events on May 21, 2021 from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM. Advance registration is required. Note, all times listed in this announcement and on the registration website are Eastern Daylight Time.

The goals of the Topic Three Proposers Day are to introduce the research community (proposers, academia, and government) to the NGA Research Directorate vision and goals; explain the mechanics and milestones of the BIG-R BAA; and provide insight into the technical areas of interest.

The BIG-R BAA Topic Three was published February 17, 2021. NGA will accept abstracts until 4:30 PM ET on July 31, 2021, and accept proposals until 4:30 PM ET on September 30, 2021. Abstracts and proposals may be submitted at any time until the associated due date.

To maximize the pool of innovative proposal concepts, NGA strongly encourages non‐traditional proposers (including small businesses, academic and research institutions, and first‐time government contractors) to participate in events such as this and related solicitation.

TOPIC OBJECTIVE AND DESCRIPTION

Topic Three of the BIG-R BAA seeks innovative ideas and concepts in the NGA Research technical domain application areas. These technical domain application areas include foundation, geophysics, geospatial cyber, image and video, predictive analytics, radar, space, spectral science, and cross-cutting programs. The purpose of a seedling project is to advance innovative concepts toward maturity by mitigating one or more early stage risks during the seedling period of performance.

The ultimate goal is for these seedlings to inform and/or be developed into technologies that can directly contribute to one or more of the NGA mission imperatives: assured positioning, navigation, timing and targeting; accelerated tasking orchestration; data access/integrity; and analytic workflow modernization.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

The NGA Research Innovative Seedlings Proposers Day will be webcast via WebEx Events on May 21, 2021 from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM. Note, all times listed in this announcement and on the registration website are Eastern Daylight Time. There is no registration fee for the Proposers Day webcast.

Registration opens: As of publication of this announcement.

Registration website: https://nga.webex.com/nga/onstage/g.php?MTID=ebb29fcc2170e5d62bddc8927a305c2c1

Registration closes: May 14, 2021 at 04:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time or when capacity is reached, whichever comes first.

Full information is available here.

Source: SAM

The post NGA announces Proposers Day appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

This announcement is a pre-solicitation synopsis and is not seeking proposals.  This pending BAA is a follow-on BAA to the NGA’s Boosting Innovative GEOINT BAA (BIG BAA, HM0476-16-BAA-0001) that effectively ended for new Topic posting on 07 December 2018.  This pre-solicitation announcement was also previously publicized under HM0476-19-BAA-0001.  It is presently anticipated that the general BAA solicitation and the first topic seeking abstracts/proposals will be published before 31 July 2020.

The mission of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Research Directorate is to deliver future Geospatial-Intelligence (GEOINT) capabilities to users for operational impact.  NGA Research solves hard defense and intelligence problems for the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense and supports the National Security Strategy.

In support of this mission, we promote research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines and transform these initiatives into disruptive GEOINT capabilities for U.S. national security.  The Boosting Innovative GEOINT-Research Broad Agency Announcement (BIG-R BAA) invites proposers to submit innovative basic and applied research and development concepts that address one or more of the following technical domains:  (1) Foundational GEOINT, (2) Advanced Phenomenologies, and (3) Analytic Technologies.

Each of these domains is described below and includes a list of example research topics that highlight several (but not all) potential areas of interest.  Specific topic areas associated with these technical domains will be posted as Amendments throughout the open period of this Announcement.  Appendixes will be added to address Amendment information.  Each posted topic area will have specific timelines for abstract and proposal submission.  Abstracts and proposals submitted in response to this BAA must investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances or substantial improvements to the existing state of practice.

Technical Domains of Interest

Foundational GEOINT.  The Foundational GEOINT portion of our portfolio focuses on the creation of always accurate, high-resolution, continually updated representations of the earth’s properties, available on demand.

Advanced Phenomenologies.  The Advanced Phenomenologies portion of our portfolio employs novel methods and efficient strategies to drive development and delivery of improved spatially, spectrally and temporally resolved data from a growing number of traditional and non-traditional sources.

Analytic Technologies.  The Analytic Technologies portion of our portfolio enhances the definition and utility of GEOINT by leveraging new sources of data and developing novel analytic techniques to deliver a geospatial dimension to multi-INT analytics, in particular to address emerging threats and mission domains.  These technologies are driven by new data sources and provide accurate, timely, reliable and scalable methods for data exploitation, integration, and analysis.

Full information is available here.

Source: SAM

The post NGA posts BIG-R BAA update appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

NGA seeks techniques that help augment analyst workflows with computer-derived observations from satellite imagery. The amount of imagery that NGA receives from various overhead collectors is vast and growing. It is an imperative for NGA to develop technologies that will help automate and augment the analysis of those images. NGA desires the capability to (1) increase the value derived from each satellite image and (2) reduce the latency between image collection and intelligence reporting. Each sub-topic below addresses this core goal and proposers should ensure that solutions are advancing these fundamental objectives.

Each proposal shall consider the NSG Data Analytic Architecture Services (NDAAS) which is built on Scale, Mesos, and Docker in C2S (an IC cloud environment) to be the intended compute architecture in which the resulting algorithms should run. This does not mean that development, training, and validation of the algorithms necessarily needs to take place in NDAAS. However, algorithms should be developed with NDAAS as the target architecture.

Each proposal should contain a Validation and Verification (V&V) plan that outlines a well-reasoned approach explaining the methodology and metrics for evaluating the proposed solution. These metrics should align with the stated goals of the sub-topic. The Government will perform independent T&E based on a plan designed around those same goals and informed by the proposals.  Government testing will occur with each software Deliverable defined below.

In accordance with proposal evaluation criteria III listed in section 5.7.1, the Government is open to teaming arrangements made among partners in industry and academia that allow for groups with expert knowledge in particular fields who lack clearances to combine with those who have expert knowledge of the classified domain and sensors.

NGA seeks to collaborate with industry and academia to research and refine novel analytic techniques, methods and processes in three key areas: (1) Object Detection, Localization, Classification and Characterization (for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery as well as for Electro-Optical Imagery); (2) Aggregation and Summarization; and (3) Contextualization.  Each submission shall cover no more than one of the four sub-topics.

NGA is collaborating with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) to place this solicitation.

Subtopic 10.1 – Object Detection, Localization, Classification, and Characterization in Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery

The objective of this sub-topic is to increase the number of observations populated in NGA’s Structured Observation Management (SOM) databases by automating and augmenting the analysis of satellite imagery.  NGA seeks solutions to detect, localize, classify, and characterize individual objects in satellite imagery sources. NGA defines detecting an object as positively identifying the presence of an object in an image. Localization is the ability to specify the location of said object with either a point annotation, a bounding box, or full segmentation. Classifying is defined as choosing the type of object from a predefined list of object categories. Characterizing is attributing certain metadata about said object, e.g., its pointing-direction, activity status, etc. NGA is primarily interested in performing this task on mobile objects. Proposals to this subtopic should address the development of a capability for panchromatic imagery or synthetic aperture radar imagery or both as described below.

NGA seeks solutions to detect, localize, classify, and characterize individual objects in synthetic aperture radar imagery (See “classified addendum” for specific sensor platform details). Proposers should develop approaches that utilize complex radar data along with synthetic and actual imagery of targets of interest, which can be used to train/refine algorithms.  Solutions should leverage available radar attributes including polarimetry and collection geometry information. NGA seeks the ability to transfer models trained on simulated imagery to applications on collected imagery and a reduced reliance on the quantity of available training data.  Proposals should describe an evaluation methodology that characterizes the changes in algorithm performance based on amount of training data and the performance impact of changes to the proportion of simulated and actual imagery.

Full information is available here.

Source: FedBizOpps

The post NGA updates BIG BAA Topic 10 appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

The BIG BAA solicits ideas for Topic Area 10, Amendment 10 – SOM Automation

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) intends to award multiple Firm-Fixed Price contracts under Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) HM0476-16-BAA-0001 for Boosting Innovative GEOINT (BIG) efforts. This will be a two-step BAA. Step One is to submit a White Paper by the topics’ due date/time. White Papers that are determined to be technically acceptable as evaluated against criteria published in this BAA will receive a Request for Proposal (RFP) from an NGA Contracting Officer, which is Step Two.

NGA welcomes all innovative and actionable White Papers that will enhance and accelerate Boosting Innovative GEOINT Analysis.  All awards will be based on merit competition.  NGA’s goal is to make awards under various research topic areas.  The NAICS code for this procurement includes 54171, Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering and Life Sciences, but other NAICS codes may apply as well. NGA encourages small businesses and universities to procure under this BAA. NGA also strongly encourages and accepts White Papers from collaboration of entities (industry and industry, industry and university, university and university, etc.) because research in multidisciplinary Topic Areas my require forming teams with strengths in multiple science and engineering fields.

Topic Area 10 – Automating Satellite Imagery Exploitation

NGA seeks techniques that help augment analyst workflows with computer-derived observations from satellite imagery. The amount of imagery that NGA receives from various overhead collectors is vast and growing. It is an imperative for NGA to develop technologies that will help automate and augment the analysis of those images. NGA desires the capability to (1) increase the value derived from each satellite image and (2) reduce the latency between image collection and intelligence reporting. Each sub-topic below addresses this core goal and proposers should ensure that solutions are advancing these fundamental objectives.

Each proposal shall consider the NSG Data Analytic Architecture Services (NDAAS) which is built on Scale, Mesos, and Docker in C2S (an IC cloud environment) to be the intended compute architecture in which the resulting algorithms should run. This does not mean that development, training, and validation of the algorithms necessarily needs to take place in NDAAS. However, algorithms should be developed with NDAAS as the target architecture.

Topic 10 has a Classified Addendum found on the ARC NGA_OCS_BIG BAA TOPIC 10 tab.

Full information is available here.

Source: FedBizOpps

The post NGA opens BIG BAA Topic Area 10 – SOM Automation appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) intends to award multiple Firm-Fixed Price contracts under Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) HM0476-16-BAA-0001 for Boosting Innovative GEOINT (BIG) efforts. This will be a two-step BAA. Step One is to submit a White Paper by the topics’ due date/time. White Papers that are determined to be technically acceptable as evaluated against criteria published in this BAA will receive a Request for Proposal (RFP) from an NGA Contracting Officer, which is Step Two.

NGA welcomes all innovative and actionable White Papers that will enhance and accelerate Boosting Innovative GEOINT Analysis.  All awards will be based on merit competition.  NGA’s goal is to make awards under various research topic areas.  The NAICS code for this procurement includes 54171, Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering and Life Sciences, but other NAICS codes may apply as well. NGA encourages small businesses and universities to procure under this BAA. NGA also strongly encourages and accepts White Papers from collaboration of entities (industry and industry, industry and university, university and university, etc.) because research in multidisciplinary Topic Areas my require forming teams with strengths in multiple science and engineering fields.

Full information is available here.

Source: FedBizOpps

The post NGA opens topic 7 in BIG BAA appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

The BAA, posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website, enables NGA to solicit proposals from both traditional and non-traditional sources for research pertaining to basic and applied research.

“This BAA topic allows NGA to assess options for advancing our geospatial analytics methods and processes from a diverse group of experts, quickly and at a relatively low cost,” said Richard Unis, the NGA Source directorate program manager. “The BAA utilizes a streamlined process, a short white paper detailing their recommended solution, and therefore we expect a broad range of innovative approaches to our topic.”

For this latest topic area, NGA seeks innovative proposals utilizing novel sources for developing analytic algorithms and methods to aid in the discovery of geospatial data that is currently unobserved or unknown, the characterization of geospatial data to provide insight and context, and use of automated technologies to aid in the timely and accurate development of foundation data.

“NGA is looking for state-of-the-art automated methods and techniques for analyzing huge volumes of geospatial data to discover the unknown in support of our national security, humanitarian and disaster relief mission,” said Unis. “These methods and techniques will help our analysts identify trends, changes and anomalies, speed up processing and exploitation, as well as reduce costs to the agency and mission partners in executing our critical missions.”

NGA anticipates awarding multiple contracts for this topic area. The target award value for contracts will not exceed $500,000. The period of performance shall not exceed 12 months from the date of the contract award. The application period for the sixth topic area is open until Sept. 21 and questions may be submitted through Sept. 6, 2017.

Additional information on Topic Area 6 is available on Federal Business Opportunities. NGA awarded the first contract for Broad Agency Announcement to boost innovative GEOINT in July 2016. The BIG BAA will be open for a total of three years. Periodically NGA will post new topics on FedBizOpps.gov as a way to seek creative solutions to GEOINT challenges

Source: NGA

The post NGA encourages industry input for advanced geospatial analytics in new BAA topic appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

This Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) solicits offers for the award of contracts under the Boosting Innovative GEOINT (BIG) for inventive, actionable ideas and proposals that will enhance GEOINT and welcomes all innovative ideas for path-breaking research and innovative techniques that may advance the GEOINT mission.  This requires new ways of doing business in order to meet unexpected and emergent requirements of the dynamic world we live in and anticipate tomorrow’s unknown challenges.  Specifically, NGA is seeking ideas and techniques that makes the biggest change and promotes moving the Agency forward on different path in lieu of improving the current path we are pursuing. This BAA is published in accordance with FAR Part 35.016 and 6.102(d) (2). A formal Request for Proposal (RFP), solicitation or additional information regarding this announcement will not be issued.

Full information is available here.

Source: FedBizOpps

The post NGA adds classified 4th topic to BIG BAA appeared first on Intelligence Community News.