Case Studies

Innovim Provides Environmental Services Support to NASA, USGS and NPS

NASA's Invasive Species Forecasting System

Through the implementation of six joint projects beginning in 2001, NASA’s Applied Science Program and Innovim have been assisting the USGS in fulfilling one of its missions to provide advanced decision support capabilities for managing invasive plant species in the United States. The USGS has the responsibility to make available these latest technologies to a host of federal agencies whose charters entail taking preemptive actions in defense of our ecosystem. Placing significant importance on this initiative, NASA has identified the Invasive Species Forecasting System as an application of national priority.

Invasive plants are a global problem costing U.S. taxpayers and consumers alone billions of dollars per year. The USDA defines an “invasive species” as one that is non-native to the ecosystem under consideration and whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or endangers human health. The USDA, along with other federal agencies, such as the U.S. Geological Survey, National Parks Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Department of Energy spends billions of dollars annually on research and control practices.

Innovim has taken the lead in designing and developing an innovative, enterprise-ready toolset which uses NASA satellite observations, sophisticated data interpretation methods, and high-performance computing and advanced modeling algorithms to generate landscape-scale, predictive maps of invasive species distributions. Ecologists and land managers use these maps to locate invasive species. The system uses satellite data products, such as vegetation abundance, atmospheric conditions and light reflectance signatures (i.e. how sunlight reflects off certain leaves), as well as soil and water properties to calculate these predictions. Benchmarking results have shown ISFS produces accurate and helpful predictive models that are easily integrated into the client work culture and surpass all methods currently used in the public sector.

This toolset, called the Invasive Species Forecast System (ISFS), employs a state-of-the-art open J2EE based framework crafted by Innovim. This development has taken place at the USGS’s National Institute for Invasive Species Science in Fort Collins, Colorado, and at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Innovim is scheduled to assist in its deployment to NPS & BLM operational ISFS turnkey systems. Innovim continues to focus on providing exceptional technical support to NASA in-support of ISFS deployments to these and possibly other federal agencies.

One such deployment is planned for Sequoia, Kings Canyon National Park. Here the ISFS team has been working with Plant Ecologists, Naturalists and GIS specialists to use ISFS to map the distribution and spread of Cheatgrass and Bull Thistle across the terrain. Most control operations performed today are in easily accessible locations such as hiking trails, roads and camping sites, while the less cultivated, natural land, which is the vast majority of the park, remains effectively unmonitored. With the ISFS maps, the Park will be able to use their limited resources more effectively to not only preserve recreational areas but plan monitoring, eradication, and restoration efforts in more remote parts of the Park to prevent further spread and adverse impacts to wildlife and the native ecosystem.
According to Innovim Project Manager Neal Most, “ISFS can quickly expand from local deployments to a nationally prioritized online system used by all operational government agencies who manage public lands. ISFS dynamically integrates NASA space-based observations and Earth systems modeling and produces predictive models and maps that improve the accuracy and timeliness of land managers’ decisions about invasive plant management and ecological restoration.”

As Innovim plays a major role in advancing the ISFS Program, it expands its contribution from engineering to supporting partnership development with key agencies and organizations. Innovim is committed to working side-by-side with NASA and partner agencies to increase the awareness and use of the ISFS.

Client Web site: http://bp.gsfc.nasa.gov/

National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) Science Data Segment (SDS)

Innovim is providing NASA with Systems Engineering and application development to support the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) Science Data Segment (SDS). The 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 is the “bridge” between current and future missions. It provides 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. The four NPP Instruments are: (1) the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), which provides global observations of land, ocean and atmospheric parameters; (2) the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS); (3) the Cross-Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), which will combine infrared and microwave measurements to measure atmospheric temperature, moisture, and pressure profiles; and (4) the Ozone Mapper/Profiler Suite (OMPS), which monitors global ozone levels. The NPP mission provides remotely-sensed land, ocean, atmospheric, and sounder data that will identify the meteorological and global climate change for the scientific communities, while also providing risk reduction for NPOESS. As part of this support Innovim has:

provided external interface definition and management between the NPP SDS, IDPS, IPO, and CARS;
provided requirements definition, management, analysis, and flow down;
provided planning, coordination, and verification;
provided schedule and risk analysis development and management;
generated "as-is" and "to-be" architecture and the associated "gap analysis" study for all elements; and
generated documentation associated with all the elements.

Innovim’s Systems Engineering process is based on sound engineering practice and experience. As engineered systems become more complex and include software and personnel interactions, the discipline and organization of engineering become fragmented and specialized. Innovim uses an iterative process that expands the common sense strategy: 1) understanding a problem before attempting to solve it; 2) examining alternative solutions; and 3) verifying that selected solutions are correct. The basic process will follow a set of steps that start with a user’s needs:

Define the system objectives (user’s needs)
Establish the functionality (functional analysis)
Establish performance requirements (requirements analysis)
Develop design and operations concepts (architecture synthesis)
Select a baseline (cost/benefit analysis)
Verify the baseline requirements (user’s needs)
Iterate the process through lower level analysis (decomposition)

The more complex systems can be defined with the aid of an Enterprise Architecture (EA) framework. The EA framework allows engineers from multiple organizations to view the system consistently and from different perspectives:

Operational View - describes the systems functional behavior.
Technical View - captures the specifications and standards used to design and implement the system. The Technical View consists of the suite of requirements, policies, and standards defining the functional, performance, operational, and workmanship aspects of the mission system and associated interfaces.
Systems View - describes the physical design of the system.

The architecture frameworks are used throughout the formulation and implementation phases of the lifecycle to:

analyze the mission system concept functions and flows;
validate and allocate functional and performance requirements;
insure a consistent, end-to-end system perspective and interoperability; and
serve as a basis for operations planning and system verification scenarios.

Client Web Site: http://nppwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Enterprise Architecture at Innovim

The federal government is undergoing vast changes in the way it does it business. These changes are driving IT projects that create infrastructure and applications that can make workers across geographic areas more productive and able to handle massive amounts of information. The successful management of this scale of change requires a plan; A roadmap. The plan must be based not on technology, and which cool applications can be brought in. The plan must be a holistic look at the business needs of the organization and the technology that will be needed to support it. What new personnel skills will be needed to support the new technology? Which technologies are mature enough to become supportable standards for the organization?
A properly developed and maintained Enterprise Architecture is a valuable input to your Capital Planning Investment Control process, and is a critical contributor to ensuring business and IT strategy alignment.
No organization can develop your Enterprise Architecture “for you”. An effective EA is developed by the owning organization with the assistance of knowledgeable personnel who bring solid experience to help guide the process.

Innovim starts the EA process with a look into the organizations future vision: what forces are at work moving the organization towards its future state? There is much emphasis on e-Government these days. Agencies are being pushed to provide access to information to citizens and government knowledge workers in a reliable, secure manner. After helping the organization determine its business direction, Innovim personnel will analyze the target business state and perform a gap analysis. The EA is developed from this analysis, and shows the path to closing the gap between the current and target organizations.

Based on our past experience, we like to cover topics such as personnel skills and process changes that must occur in order to support the new way of doing business. How the data will be organized to support the new business model is also critical. We also recommend a “sequencing plan”, which looks at the ways the organization can structure their portfolio to bring on new technologies and systems in the most efficient manner. Innovim will work with you to determine the best format and organization of your EA.
The development of the EA is only the beginning of the Innovim EA program. In order to remain relevant, the EA has to be constantly updated as the business direction and the technology that can support it are constantly changing. We recommend updates to the EA twice a year.

Innovim and our partners bring EA experience to the table. Our team includes personnel who have worked on and managed award winning EA programs. Let us show you how you can take your portfolio management capability to the next level with the help of EA.

NASA’s Earth Science Data System Working (ESDS)

GOES-N Mission Support

OMI SIPS

NASA’s Space Geodesy Branch GEODYN Program

Atmospheric Composition and Land Measurement Web Portals