Intra-Agency Engagement in NOAA's Force Architecture/ Fleet Recapitalization

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO) manages and operates a fleet of 16 research and survey ships - the largest fleet of federal research ships in the nation. Ranging from large oceanographic research vessels capable of exploring the world’s deepest oceans, to smaller ships responsible for charting the shallow bays and inlets of the United States, the fleet supports a wide range of marine activities including fisheries research, nautical charting, and ocean and climate studies.

With these wide-ranging responsibilities, NOAA requires a robust network of available assets, something that is becoming more and more evident as ships age and are taken off-line. To counteract the attrition of available assets and thus ensure continuity and well-being of these scientific missions, NOAA is currently engaged in Fleet Recapitalization efforts with the purpose of identifying the best way of replacing and improving the efficiency of the available fleet forces.

This presentation will introduce NOAA’s intra-agency efforts in conducting an advanced fleet force architecture and recapitalization plan. The enterprise architecture is led by OMAO with help from the Technology, Planning, and Integration for Observation (TPIO) division using the foundational data managed by TPIO, NOAA’s observing requirements and data management team . With this collaboration, both teams met with representatives from NOAA’s six line offices to collect data to regenerate NOAA’s architecture data availability, structure, accuracy, analyses, technology, and tool development. The architecture is still in development but discussion on efforts thus far, lessons learned, and objectives moving forward will be included in the presentation.