[OBSIPtec] A message from IRIS regarding NSF program solicitation NSF17-587

[Bob Woodward]

Dear Colleagues,

On July 28th, NSF released a solicitation (NSF 17-587) for the “Management and Operation of the Ocean Bottom Seismometer Instrument Center (OBSIC).  NSF is looking for an organization to manage and operate a new consolidated Ocean Bottom Seismometer Instrument Center (OBSIC) to support research and education in the Ocean and Earth sciences.  The OBSIC will serve as the primary source of OBS instruments and field support for NSF-funded research programs.  

The OBSIC solicitation has been reviewed and discussed by the IRIS Senior Management Team and the IRIS Board of Directors.  IRIS will not respond to this solicitation as a lead organization.  However there are two services that IRIS is willing to provide to any organization that does respond to the OBSIC solicitation:

(1) Long-term data archiving and distribution.  The solicitation states that the Awardee “will ensure that OBS data acquired through the use of OBSIC will be in formats usable by researchers and of sufficient quality to be entered into an appropriate long-term repository, such as the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology Data Management Center (IRIS-DMC)”.  IRIS currently manages data from the OBSIP and is interested in continuing to archive and distribute OBSIC data.  IRIS will work with any respondent to this solicitation who wants to utilize the IRIS DMC to archive and distribute OBSIC data to include appropriate language in their proposal to ensure that this Awardee responsibility is satisfied.   IRIS Data Services is also well-positioned to evolve existing international standards to better accommodate the needs of the US OBS community and could do so if requested.  According to the solicitation, the cost of archiving and distributing OBSIC data does not need to be included in base $1.8M costs of OBSIC. 

(2) Quality Assessment and Control of OBS data and metadata.  According the solicitation, Awardees are also responsible for “delivery of high-quality OBS data and metadata to PIs for research projects and for subsequent archiving”.  IRIS would like to provide QA/QC services to OBSIC that could be part of the Awardee’s overall data quality plan and performance monitoring.  The services IRIS could provide include a part-time data quality analyst and the use of the automated MUSTANG quality assessment system and other automated QA/QC tools available through the IRIS DMC. The cost for these services would have to be supported through a subaward to IRIS.  IRIS will work with any interested respondent to define the scope of work and cost of providing these services.

If you have have any questions about either of these tasks or require additional information, please contact us.


Bob Detrick
IRIS President

Doug Wiens
Chair, IRIS Board of Directors