Innovim News

The results of our CMMI Level 2 SCAMPI Class A appraisal were approved by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University, on November 14. The CMMI Framework serves to solidify Innovim's continual improvement process, allowing an increased level of quality and service to our existing and future clients. We continue to develop our procedures with plans towards Level 3 certification in the future.

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Innovim has been ranked No. 32 in the 2008 Washington Technology Fast 50! Washington Technology's Fast Fifty recognizes some of the most successful companies in the government market that have experienced phenomenal growth over the past five years.

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Innovim has been ranked No. 46 in the Top 100 Government Services Companies in the U.S. by the Inc. 5000! The Inc. 5000 determines rankings according to percentage revenue growth over a four year period.

Innovim has also been ranked No. 53 in the Top 100 Businesses regionally, in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV!

In addition, Innovim has been ranked No. 705 out of the top 5,000 companies across all industries.

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Innovim has been awarded a task by NASA in support CERES FM-5 to the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP). The National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) is a joint mission involving the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) and the NPOESS Integrated Program Office (IPO). The NPP mission collects and distributes remotely-sensed land, ocean, and atmospheric data to the meteorological and global climate change communities as the responsibility for these measurements transitions from existing Earth-observing missions such as Aqua, Terra and Aura, to the NPOESS. It will provide atmospheric and sea surface temperatures, humidity sounding, land and ocean biological productivity, and cloud and aerosol properties. CERES FM-5 was selected to fly on the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) mission in 2010, continuing a long legacy of climate data recording at NASA.

The CERES, or Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System, FM-5 (the flight model designation) instrument was originally built as part of NASA's Earth Observing System, and has sister instruments currently flying on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellite missions. NASA Langley Research Center manages the CERES program and will lead the effort to prepare the instrument for flight. Northrop Grumman Space Technologies, who built the original CERES, will do modifications on the instrument for NPP.

As part of this task Innovim will provide requirements definition, operation concepts, trade studies, interface design, systems engineering and system redesign of the NPP Science Data Segment as it relates to the CERES instrument.

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Innovim has been awarded a 3 year contract with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Hydrospheric and Biospheric Science Laboratory to integrate remotely sensed data within a biogeochemical model to assess ecological impacts from environmental, climatic and anthropogenic disturbances such as: forest fire; deforestation; drought; flood; invasive species; and pest outbreaks. Innovim will collate and assess forest inventory, climate and environmental data derived from satellite archives including MODIS and Landsat as well as the U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis repository. These data will be applied within the Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach (CASA) ecosystem model to estimate and forecast North American forest biomass and carbon fluxes. These model simulations will contribute to the development of more accurate terrestrial carbon budgets across the North American continent. With this knowledge, impacts of natural and man-made disturbances can be better understood, and prevention and recovery efforts better executed. Disciplines such as climatology, forest management, agriculture, disaster management and ecological and wildlife conservation benefit from the model and simulation results generated by this research.

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Innovim has been awarded a three (3) year contract with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Hydrospheric and Biospheric Science Laboratory to integrate remotely sensed data within a biogeochemical model to assess ecological impacts from environmental, climatic and anthropogenic disturbances such as: forest fire; deforestation; drought; flood; invasive species; and pest outbreaks. Innovim will collate and assess forest inventory, climate and environmental data derived from satellite archives including MODIS and Landsat, as well as the U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis repository. These data will be applied within the Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach (CASA) ecosystem model to estimate and forecast North American forest biomass and carbon fluxes. These model simulations will contribute to the development of more accurate terrestrial carbon budgets across the North American continent. With this knowledge, impacts of natural and man-made disturbances can be better understood, and prevention and recovery efforts better executed. Disciplines such as climatology, forest management, agriculture, disaster management and ecological and wildlife conservation benefit from the model and simulation results generated by this research.

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The "Honey Bee Net" web interface is designed to enable easy comparison with satellite and other climate records, and provide a useful insight into how climate change and land use/land cover changes affect nectar flows. In 2007, over 25 beekeepers volunteered to collect scale hive records in order to document the current status of the regional nectar flows between Maryland and Delaware. Beekeepers from over 15 states have expressed interest for the 2008 season.

The Innovim Team has recently been selected to contribute to this regional initiative to study the honey bee population. Our very own science support analyst, Ms. Jaime Nickeson, is the lead scientist for the Honey Bee Net project.

On January 16th, 2008, the annual Science Poster Party Blowout was held at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Ms. Nickeson presented a poster that explained the scale-hive network that is currently in development, including how her team plans to relate nectar flow to climate variation observed by satellite.

As a result of her efforts, she received the award for "Most Readable Poster," along with a plaque and a GEWA/Visitor Center gift certificate.

Congratulations Jaime! Keep up the great work!

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Innovim received word from GSA that we are being recognized for being in the top 20% of all GSA IT Schedule 70 contractors for the Year 2007. The recognition is based on total dollars of business awarded through the GSA Schedule 70 contract vehicle.

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Innovim is pleased to announce our participation in the 88th AMS Annual Meeting to be held at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana on January 20-24, 2008. The American Meteorological Society Annual meeting is the largest exhibit program in the atmospheric, oceanic, and related sciences. The 2008 Annual Meeting will be organized around the theme "Enhancing the Connectivity between Research and Applications for the Benefit of Society." AMS will host a series of lectures and forums including an Eighth Presidential Forum: "Hurricane Katrina -- Looking Back to Look Ahead." We will be highlighting our work in the earth and weather sciences. Please visit us in Booth Number 737 !!!

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Innovim has been awarded a contract with the U.S. Geological Survey for technical services and outreach support on their Invasive Species program. Innovim will support The Fort Collins Science Center, Fort Collins, CO, with developing methods and tools for management and control of invasive species on DOI and adjacent lands. Over the past four years, Innovim has been instrumental in assisting NASA and USGS in developing web-based capabilities which incorporate NASA satellite observations, Earth systems modeling and computing technologies into an evolving USGS program on Invasive Species Modeling and Assessment. The Invasive Species Forecasting System (ISFS) is one outcome of this collaboration, a software framework providing data and algorithms which produce predictive habitat maps of invasive species distributions. Innovim will assist USGS with integrating ISFS capabilities into their Invasive Species program by providing management, systems engineering, application integration, data analysis, systems deployment and outreach services.

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NASA has awarded Innovim with a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract extension in support of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP). NPP is a joint mission between NASA and the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Integrated Program Office (IPO). NPOESS is the U. S. Government’s future low-Earth orbiting weather and environmental satellite system, which combines Missions currently performed separately by three agencies (NASA, DoD, and NOAA). NPP provides a “bridge” between current and future missions by providing pre-operational on-orbit test and risk reduction for key NPOESS instruments and ground-based data processing capabilities, while maintaining continuity of environmental data used for long-term climate change research. As part of this contract Innovim will provide systems design, architecture and engineering support for the NPP Science Data Segment (SDS) and the NPP Instruments Calibration/ Validation Support Element (NICSE). NICSE provides support for assessing and validating pre-launch and post-launch radiometric and geometric calibration and characterization of VIIRS instrument data.

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Innovim has been awarded a task to work with the University of Maryland Baltimore County and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on development of web based Service Oriented Atmospheric Radiance (SOAR) for the Dynamic Generation of L1 Grids of Coincident AIRS, AMSU and MODIS Satellite Sounding Radiance Data for Climate Studies. SOAR is built on the SOA paradigm that makes it practical for the science community to dynamically access, manipulate and generate long term records of L1 pre-gridded sounding radiances of coincident multi-sensor data for regions specified according to user chosen criteria. SOAR employs a modification of the standard Client Server interactions that allows users to represent themselves directly to the Process Server through their own web browsers. The browser uses AJAX to request Javascript libraries and DHTML interfaces that define the possible client interactions and communicates the SOAP messages to the Process server allowing for dynamic web dialogs with the user to take place on the fly. The Process Server is also connected to an underlying high performance compute cluster and storage system which provides much of the data processing capabilities required to service the client requests. The compute cluster employs optical communications to NOAA and NASA for accessing the data and under the governance of the Process Server invokes algorithms for on-demand spatial, temporal, and spectral gridding. Scientists can choose from a variety of statistical averaging techniques for compositing satellite observed sounder radiances from the AIRS, AMSU or MODIS instruments to form spatial-temporal grids for their respective studies.

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Innovim is opening a new office in the Maryland Trade Center III building located at 7501 Greenway Center Drive, Suite 660, Greenbelt, Maryland. The floor plan is finalized and construction is underway. The new office will open on May 1st.

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Innovim was selected by SGT to support the NASA Space Geodesy Branch with a new task order. Innovim is responsible for providing software development in several support areas, including the orbit determination and geodetic parameter estimation algorithms, orbit dynamics, earth dynamics, and measurement modeling.

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Innovim was selected to support NASA's Terrestrial Information Systems Branch by designing, implementing, and maintaining Atmospheric Composition and Land Measurement web portals that will provide access to a comprehensive suite of EOS data products and other validation-related data for a globally-distributed set of core validation sites. In addition, Innovim will provide technical services for the Terrestrial Information Systems Branch supporting MODIS and other moderate resolution remote sensing and global processing projects.

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