The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS) is seeking IT expertise from industry as part of a push to increase analysis and prediction of the nation’s water resources, according to a sources sought notice posted on SAM.gov.
The agency wants to improve its prediction and analysis of floods and water supply and quality in light of climate change, pollution, population growth, and aging infrastructure. Specifically, the NWS’ Office of Water Prediction (OWP) wants to operationally support and deliver science-based, integrated, consistent, timely, reliable, and accurate water resource monitoring, prediction, and diagnostic information to the nation.
A contract that might result from NOAA’s sources sought notice would cover the development of a Next-Generation Water Resources Modeling Framework starting in 2025 with a testing environment for optimizing both the national water model (NWM) and flood inundation mapping (FIM) services. The framework would be updated annually.
“A Next-Generation Water Resources Modeling Framework would enable OWP to provide operational delivery of science-based, integrated, consistent, timely, reliable, and accurate water resources monitoring, prediction, and diagnostic information to the nation,” the notice reads.
In addition, the contract would address the delivery of comprehensive and real-time FIM capabilities and services. It would also help OWP develop and leverage standards and best practices to produce an enterprise hydro fabric solution that supports both NWM and FIM model formulations and capabilities.
NOAA is requesting industry to submit responses to the questions listed in a Google Form by September 8.