Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO) Areas of Interest

Child Development Center

​Technology Area(s): video analytics; data visualization; facial recognition; biometrics; quality of life; child safety, health, and welfare; smart and resilient installations

Description:  Army Child and Youth Services constantly strives to innovate and improve services.  Army Child Development Centers (CDC) were among the first to implement centrally monitored security cameras to increase the safety of students.  This program is intended to ensure that Army CDCs provide the most modern options for ensuring the health and welfare of the children served.  The use of close-circuit television video-recording (CCTV) is common in CDCs for security purposes (per AR 190-13: The Army Physical Security Program), however these data feeds are not maximized to their full potential.  Opportunities exist to utilize video surveillance programs in support of broader health and wellbeing attributes including metrics monitored for CDC statutory accreditation requirements (per AR 608-10: Child Development Services).  The Army wishes to stay at the cutting edge of various functions and technologies and is looking to partner with innovative small businesses that may have solutions to CDC challenges.  The areas listed below are general monitoring functions that the Army is interested in leveraging novel solutions in support of.

• Classroom operations, for example, room occupancy by type, caregiver-to-child ratio, unauthorized occupant, number of children in fire drill, handwashing, time infant on ground.
• Facility operations, for example, sign in/out, wait times and time spent in activity centers, obstructed egress route, location of chemicals, cot location during nap times, children on furniture.
• Child/staff behavior, for example, response time to distress, body language of stress, need of rescue medications, incidence of fighting, development readiness for next classroom.  

Solutions shall be tailored to interconnect with existing network systems and must adhere to DFARS 252.235-7004, Protection of Human Subjects.  
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The Army is interested in exploring innovative technology domains that may not be covered in the list above, so this topic is intended to also be a call for open ideas and technologies that cover other related areas not currently listed (i.e. the unknown-unknown). This topic is meant for innovative solutions to be adapted in innovative ways to meet DoD stakeholders’ needs in a short timeframe and at a low cost.

Data Ingestion and Management

Technology Area(s): data ingestion; conversion; inferencing; infrastructure; utilities; facilities; modeling; simulation; analysis; data fusion
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Description:  ERDC seeks to improve capabilities and methodologies for enabling users of an installation operations and planning tool to efficiently provide, transform and fuse legacy data sources (e.g., local standard data, non-standardized CAD or GIS files, map scans in PDF, legacy spreadsheets with numeric and text data, etc.) with modern data and analytics.  Solutions should enable users to efficiently upload data from their local machine to a service available on an IL-5 government cloud-hosted service and have the solution detect the appropriate file types, categories, themes, and extract and populate metadata about the legacy data source.  The solution should provide the ability to accurately and quickly transform the legacy data source into a hosted data store and format that preserves original source content and conforms to applicable standards (e.g., SDSFIE, BIM, etc.) as much as possible.  The solution should preserve as much spatial information (e.g., latitude, longitude, height, elevation, dimensions, etc.) and textual information (e.g., identifiers, labels, materials, model numbers, etc.) as possible, and embed this information in the applicable files or fields.  The solution may infer the meaning of labels within data based on label content and/or how labels are organized across data layers or files.  The solution may infer facility footprints, walls, doors, windows, openings, and mechanical indicators.  The solution may attempt to validate inferences if information from different sources is available (e.g., multiple files with varying information on the same facility or installation). The solution should attempt or aid in associating information across sources (e.g., mechanical data records and facility numbers from structured data sources, joined with spatial maps with facility numbers, and CAD records with facility mechanical locations). The solution may provide quality control/assurance processes, and should clearly demarcate data quality status (e.g., original, inferred, validated, etc.).  Processed data will become part of an installation data representation.  The solution should support user and administrator ability to manage appropriate data access controls and facilitate data discovery. Responses to this need may address all or portions of this description.

Exploratory, Predictive and Scenario Data Analytics

Technology Area(s): trend analysis; pattern detection; data analysis; installations; resilience; sustainability; quality of life

​Description:  ERDC seeks to improve capabilities and methodologies for efficiently discovering, exploring and understanding patterns within and across diverse data sources, and applying these patterns in order to make better military installation and facility decisions.  The solution should work as a component of an IL-5 government cloud-hosted service.  Solutions should be flexible to work across diverse installation infrastructure, facility, services, mechanical, survey, and operations data, and present users temporal, spatial, network, text, financial and/or other patterns embedded in the data, enabling users to explore these patterns based on varying filters, scales and dimensions.  The solution may allows users to design scenarios and explore patterns that may support the proposed scenarios, and estimate system confidence of the potential scenario or pattern conditions.  Analytics are required to support the understanding of near real-time issues and trends, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, annual and other patterns, and related course of action and alternatives analyses.  The solution should enable users to build presentations or set bookmarks to return to patterns or scenarios for ease of re-use and communication.  Responses to this need may address all or portions of this description.

Installation Digital Twin Data Modeling, Integration and Visualization

Technology Area(s): data fusion; data modeling; data visualization

​Description:  ERDC seeks to provide robust installation representations for analysis, modeling, and visualization of past, present, and future conditions in order to improve military installation decision-making.  The “digital twin” solution should support multiple data standards (e.g., SDSFIE), file types and content (e.g., CAD/BIM, GIS, real-time sensors, etc.) and provide robust application programming interface capabilities to enable integration with a variety of external models, simulations, and analytics. The solution should work as an IL-5 government cloud-hosted service.  Solutions should preferably support 3D and 2D, interior and exterior facility visualization, temporal selection and filtering, spatial selection and filtering, data querying, and virtual reality fly-through and walk-throughs. The solution should support user creation of bookmarked locations, routes, and query sets, and enable users to create labels and other mark-ups within the digital twin representation.

Installation Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Workflows

Technology Area(s): AI; ML; NLP; pattern analysis; collection; fusion

​Description:  ERDC seeks to improve the ability for installation personnel to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to collect and process installation, facility, and operations data, monitor and analyze the data, develop reports, proposals and recommendations, and develop investment and portfolio strategies.  ERDC seeks solutions that improve installation workflows, to expedite processes, improve collaboration and communication, fuse diverse data sources; understand patterns, relationships, and correlations within the data.  The solution should support individual functional line and cross-functional pattern detection, and support anticipatory and predictive insights, and eventually offer prescriptive suggestions.  The solution should support large volumes of diverse historical data (e.g., maintenance, facility, financial, etc.), as well as dynamic near-real time data (e.g., weather, work order, utility, mechanical systems, etc.). 

Smart Installation, Campus, and Facility Sensor Pods

Technology Area(s): Sensors; AI; ML; pattern analysis; optimization; safety

​Description:  ERDC seeks to understand available sensors for improving campus, facility, infrastructure, and facility systems to improve military installation quality, operations, efficiency, and optimizations.  ERDC seeks solutions that can be readily and easily integrated with an IL-5 government cloud-hosted service compliant with Army NETCOM requirements.  The solution should be cost efficient, easy to install/retrofit, and provide open data access to other ERDC analytic and processing capabilities. 

Master Planning Modernization

Technology Area(s):      smart and resilient installations; urban planning, regional planning, digital installation, quality of life, behavioral analytics, smart islands, 

Description:  As the world inside and outside Army military bases becomes increasingly interconnected and technology-enabled capabilities, the Army requires adaptation of policy, processes, and infrastructure, and Installation Master Planning is recognized as offering a smart city context to enable the business transformative objectives outlined in the Army Installation Strategy (AIS), Army Data Strategy (ADS), and the Army Business Management Plan (ABMP 2021-2025).  The Army is sponsoring initial business transformative and modernization pilots addressing Installation Master Planning process through the development of a next generation comprehensive installation planning common operating picture (COP) to digitize planning and programming processes integrated with a GIS-based platform to consolidate, analyze, and visualize GIS, IoT, Army legacy and installation data and future development alternatives to enable near-real time short- and long-term decisions for real property, infrastructure, environment, mobility, quality-of-life, operations, mission, and security and safety.  To enable at scale, the Army wishes to further explore digital twin solutions and partnerships with innovative small businesses for solutions to smart installations and urban planning challenges.  The areas listed below are general functions that the Army is interested in leveraging novel solutions in support of:

• Army Installation Planning Common Operating Picture (COP) campaign plan to deploy, test, and train the minimum viable product which will be available Feb 2022. 
• Enterprise consumption, for example, solution development using master planning data for digital enterprise views of resource impacts based on master planning scenarios and/or projects.  
• Advanced Modeling Scenarios, for example, integrate from a growing portfolio of urban planning COTS and open source tools developed by contributors from academia, planning organizations, businesses, and individuals to integrate seamless with one another and focuses on the specific problems encountered when performing spatial analysis within cities such as transportation planning, climate preparedness, population synthesizers, and others.  Several urban planning open source software are free or low-cost acquisition.
• Lifecycle forecasting of Smart Assets, for example, exploring planning cost and timeline forecasting techniques leveraging machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) where benefits can result from using limited or imperfect data to de-bias decisions.  
• Quality of Life, for example, stakeholder engagement is limited based on underserved outreach or space limitation of installation master planning charrettes.  To capture feedback from civilians, soldiers, and their families, leverage web-based customizable stakeholder engagement platforms to engage stakeholders and capture geo-location feedback of the existing and proposed changes, to reach better QOL planning outcomes.
• Mobility features, for example, right-size application for mobile /tablet use in the Army environment for data collection, validation, and visualization in the field.

Solutions shall be tailored to support UFC 2-100-01 Installation Master Planning and relevant Army pamphlets and regulations except where data-driven evidence requires a request for policy update to fulfill the driving Army guidance and mandates for modernization and innovation.   

The Army is interested in exploring innovative technology domains that may not be covered in the list above, so this topic is intended to also be a call for open ideas and technologies that cover other related areas not currently listed (i.e. the unknown-unknown). This topic is meant for innovative solutions to be adapted in innovative ways to meet DoD stakeholders’ needs in a short timeframe and at a low cost