D--Software Development Earthquake Science

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Earthquake Science Center, Moffett Field, CA has a requirement for a qualified business capable of providing software development as described below. The period of performance shall be six months, with options for three additional six months for each task/deliverable. The Request for Proposal (RFP), number 140G0230R0006 , will be made available through the Government-wide Point of Entry (GPE), in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) 5.102(a)(1), on or about 15 August 2020. The Government anticipates award of a Firm-Fixed Price type contract. Please contact the Contracting Officer, in writing, by email at contact@example.gov , with any questions. This notice and any resulting solicitation or contract conforms to the requirements in place through FAC 2020-05, effective 03/30/2020. This requirement is set aside for small businesses. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code - 541511 Custom Computer Programming Services and associated size standard in millions of dollars: $30.0 apply to this announcement. SCOPE The USGS seeks to contract a research computer scientist with broad expertise and experience in software development and the testing of scientific hypotheses and software. The contractor will modify and extend an existing prototype operational earthquake forecasting system, accomplished through the following tasks: (1) adapt the scientific codes to accurately determine aftershock parameters for Epidemic Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) models in the presence of temporal changes in earthquake catalog completeness after large earthquakes including aftershocks, and simulate synthetic ETAS catalogs including temporal changes in earthquake catalog completeness after large earthquakes for use in forecasts. (2) the contractor will leverage the automatic aftershock forecasting software's algorithms to transfer information to the Earthquake Hazards Program web software in order to define sequences of earthquakes for presentation as such on the Earthquake Hazards Program web site. (3) the contractor will adapt the aftershock forecasting computational software that estimates the number and probabilities of earthquakes in a given time window to produce forecasts of sequence duration in terms of the time, including uncertainty, when the probability of a given magnitude earthquake in the next year (or other time interval specified by the USGS) decays to a given probability (e.g. 50%, 25%, 10%, or 5%). (4) the contractor will develop algorithms to notify the USGS aftershock forecasting and earthquake monitoring staff when a large change in the aftershock forecasts occur due to the occurrence of a large aftershock or large changes in the aftershock parameters (e.g. magnitudes) or large changes in the aftershock sequence clustering parameters. Note that options 2 to 4 may be reordered by the USGS staff to meet Earthquake Hazard Program priorities. The contractor must be able to quickly and efficiently construct and test new modules in modern object-oriented code. The contractor must be able to code in other required computer languages (Java, Python, and Typescript) and utilize specified software packages (ActiveMQ, MongoDB, and the USGS PDL, ComCat earthquake catalog, and OpenSHA). The contractor must also have expertise and experience in developing tests that ensure that the code is operating correctly and to test the accuracy of the forecasts for past earthquakes based on the observed data. The contractor must be able to meet in person on a weekly basis with staff scientists at the USGS Moffett Field office who are guiding the research, and present oral progress updates as requested. The contractor will be responsible for preparing the modeling results and/or the code itself for publication, including writing appropriate documentation. The contractor will publish results in peer-reviewed scientific journals and/or in official USGS publication series. Contractor requirements include: 1. Extensive experience with object-oriented software engineering. 2. Experience with the verification and validation of computer codes and scientific results. 3. Required equipment includes engineering workstations with up to 192 GB of memory and software development tools and broadband internet connection for access to USGS earthquake data.