Transfer of University of South Florida computer vision valuation agorithms into NIST codebase

The Department of Commerce/National Institute of Standards and Technology intends to negotiate on a sole source basis with The University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620 to assist The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Information Access Division (IAD) in creating an evaluation tools set for legacy computer vision detection, tracking, and recognition tasks. The work shall address the needs of the NIST Speech Group to transition the prototype evaluation tools developed by the University of South Florida (USF) to support evaluation activities within the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) Video Analysis and Content Extraction (VACE) program. During Phase II of the VACE program, under IARPA sponsorship, NIST provided technical oversight for the development of a number of computer vision evaluation tasks and USF implemented the evaluations and software tools used to score the performance of the assessed algorithms. The transition of the software to the Speech Group's code base is necessary to ensure that the scoring algorithms developed by USF can be successfully deployed and extended at NIST and used in future NIST-coordinated computer vision evaluations. It will also permit NIST to support legacy use of the research data created in the VACE Phase II Program. The algorithms and software to be transferred were developed by USF. Therefore USF is uniquely qualified to transition these algorithms and tools into NIST code base. Additionally the personnel who developed the USF software to be supported have the detailed knowledge of the algorithm, metrics, and software developed for the VACE Phase II effort and they have the unique expertise to assist NIST in transitioning these capabilities into NIST-maintained software. A fixed price purchase order will be issued on or about April 17, 2008. The Government intends to solicit only this one source under the authority of FAR 13.106-1(b).Interested concerns may identify their capabilities by submitting a capability statement that demonstrates in written narrative format their ability to meet the requirement and objectives as described in this synopsis.Capability statements may be e-mailed to Barbara.Suhrie@nist.gov. Information received will be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. This notice is not a request for quotation. A determination by the Government whether to compete this proposed requirement is solely within the discretion of the Government.