NEXTGEN FEDERAL SYSTEMS LLC — Department of Commerce SBIR Phase I: 9.5

Description

NextGen Federal Systems (NextGen), a Small Business Concern (SBC), is excited to propose a powerful software package, coupled database, and a machine-learning (ML) workflow to support streamlined evaluation and research-to-operations (R2O) of space weather ML models and techniques. In response to the NOAA Effect of Space Weather subtopic (NOAA SBIR 9.5), we propose the Machine Intelligence for Space Weather (MINTS) capability. MINTS addresses the SBIR topic call for “integrating emergent technologies, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence to enhance space weather capabilities.” Space weather data-driven ML approaches have been shown to outperform statistical and physics-based approaches in many settings. However, ML results in the literature have historically been difficult to reproduce when the code or datasets are not available, and the runtime environment is not well documented. This makes it challenging to evaluate for potential transition to testbed operations. To combat this, NextGen proposes MINTS for space weather. It provides the space weather research and operations communities the means to move towards an ‘open-source’ approach, where code and data are encouraged to be made publicly available to ensure reproducibility.