Added: May 07, 2008 11:26 am
The purpose of this solicitation is to provide an opportunity for one or more organizations to participate in the Development and Deployment phase of the Clarus Multi-state Regional Demonstrations. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), both agencies of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), request proposals to result in the award of one or more contracts to private sector and/or academic institutions for the development and implementation of new, innovative Business-to-Government (B2G) services, and to some extent, Business-to-Traveler (B2T) services.
The Clarus Initiative, established in 2004, is a multi-year program administered and funded by the USDOT. The Initiative includes program management, stakeholder coordination, education and outreach activities, and the actual engineering and implementation of the Clarus System. Through the Clarus System, the FHWA is demonstrating a data management system for sharing quality checked surface transportation weather and pavement observations. Through the sharing of high quality, surface transportation-related observations from the Clarus System, it is envisioned that this enabling technology will aid in reducing the impact of adverse weather for all surface transportation users and operators.
Under a separate FHWA award, Contract No. DTFH61-05-C-00022, the Clarus System was designed based upon an overall Concept of Operations (ConOps) and requirements defined by Clarus stakeholders. Clarus System development was completed and implemented during a proof-of-concept deployment in 2006 to ensure that the system components operated and interfaced properly. The Clarus System ConOps, requirements, system design documents and test plan can be found on the Clarus Initiative website which is located at http://www.clarusinitiative.org/Archive.htm.
Progress on the Clarus Initiative has advanced such that the Government began conducting Multi-state Regional Demonstrations during 2006. Through the Clarus Multi-state Regional Demonstrations the Government aims to achieve the following objectives:
(1) Demonstrate that the Clarus System functions as designed by incentivizing a large number of State (or Provincial) and local agencies to contribute data from their ESS networks;
(2) Enable proactive transportation system management through utilization of the Clarus System; and,
(3) Provide an environment for the private sector and academic organizations to innovate and create new and improved services that will benefit the public (both government and travelers), academia and the entire weather enterprise.
The first phase of the Clarus Multi-state Regional Demonstrations was launched during the fall of 2006 with a Request for Applications (RFA) to State DOTs (DTFH61-07-RA-00001). This RFA satisfied the first two objectives listed above by incentivizing transportation agencies to contribute their ESS data and metadata to the Clarus System and to document their needs (for new products, techniques, etc.) within a new set of services. These services are documented within three sets of ConOps and are central to the successful response to this solicitation.
The second phase of the Clarus Multi-state Regional Demonstrations began during the summer of 2007. This phase, the Connection Incentive Program, provides grants to public transportation agencies to assist them in connecting to the Clarus System. Funding from the grants could be used, with FHWA approval, for expenses associated with metadata collection or for software or hardware changes needed to connect to the system. Agencies will be able to participate in this phase (and apply for grants) until the end of September 2008.
This Request for Proposals (RFP) is specifically focused on the third phase of the Clarus Multi-state Regional Demonstrations; development and deployment of Clarus-enabled services which build upon use case scenarios provided within the Phase 1 ConOps. In addition to the development and implementation activities, the contractor(s) will be expected to document their experiences in using the Clarus System.
The objective of this contract to fulfill Phase 3 of the Clarus Multi-state Regional Demonstrations and show how data from the Clarus System are utilized by, or a benefit to, the public and the public agencies responsible for transportation system operations.
