NextGen Federal Systems (NextGen), an innovative information technology small business, has recently been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract by the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Under this contract, NextGen will conduct research to model the exponential data growth patterns emerging within the Air Force Weather (AFW) enterprise and identify areas of optimization to ensure that weather modeling systems can scale as needed to support efficient data management, analysis, and availability in the future data environment.
The Air Force has a worldwide mission requiring environmental situational awareness spanning terrestrial, atmospheric, and space domains to execute missions and retain an asymmetric advantage over adversaries. The AFW enterprise is responsible for providing accurate, timely weather information to the warfighter. It is experiencing large data growth that is stressing its infrastructure and bandwidth capacities. This growth is due to both new sensors and satellites coming online as well as an enterprise-wide migration to a new weather forecast model that provides data with a much denser resolution than previous models.
“The NextGen Team is uniquely prepared to conduct a thorough data growth study of current/future AFW needs and capacities, analyze the results, and identify advanced technical solutions” said Jeremy Loomis, Chief Software Architect at NextGen.
Loomis will serve as the Principal Investigator for this project, leading a team of both local and remote engineers. “NextGen will identify solutions based on smart sensors, data compression, Quality of Service (QoS) tiers, grid computing, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), and more efficient user applications” said Loomis.
The SBIR program is a highly competitive program created to support scientific excellence and technological innovation through the investment of federal research funds in critical American priorities to build a strong national economy. The SBIR program encourages small businesses through Government investments to conduct research and development that leads to development of technology and new discoveries that can be commercialized within Government and Commercial markets.
