(IVAR) - Final Report - Strategic Environmental Research and ...

To answer that question, we obtained from Dr. Timothy J. Nohara (personal communication) a
working estimate of the cost to acquire and operate an avian radar system, based on ARTI's
experience to date installing systems at SEA, NASWI, EAFB, Edisto Island, John F. Kennedy
Airport in New York, and Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. In addition, we obtained from discussion
with DoD natural resources management personnel and contractors who work at various military
airfields an estimate of the level-of-effort and average cost for conducting bird surveys manually.
Data Management. The avian radar systems evaluated by the IVAR project generate, for each
update of each tracked target, digital records that include a wide range of parameters. Those data
can be stored locally or remotely, in either files or a database, and can be accessed by a wide
range of display and analysis tools supplied by the vendor or available from third parties (e.g., a
GIS). We also demonstrated that these radar systems maintain a high degree of end-to-end data
integrity and data quality when storing, transmitting, and redistributing these data. This
capability leads to the second question: What is, or would be, the cost of maintaining this same
data management and data quality levels for manually collected field measurements
Many field observers still record their observations on hardcopy field data sheets because in
many cases it is easier, faster, and more flexible. Processing the data typically requires
transcribing the data to digital form, an additional and often error-prone process. Even when the
field data are recorded digitally, they still need to be reformatted and metadata about the
measurements need to be added for their eventual long-term (re)use. To address the effort
involved in these processes, we relied on questionnaires previously sent to natural resource
personnel to uncover typical avian data collection and management procedures.
Results
Improved Sampling Tool. As noted elsewhere, the avian radar systems we evaluated can sample
bird populations continuously. To convert that effort into a cost, we used Dr. Nohara’s estimate
of $500K to purchase, obtain an operating permit, choose a site, any necessary construction (e.g.,
concrete pad, lighting, utilities, computer network), operate, and maintain a system for one year.
To this we added, based on ARTI’s experience and on general industry averages, an estimated
annual operating and maintenance cost of 20% of the start-up costs for the remaining four of the
five years. These estimates yielded an overall 5-year cost for a system of:
$500K + 4(20% x $500k) = $900K.
If operated continuously for five years, the aggregate cost of $900K translates to an hourly rate of
approximately $20/hr. The comparable fully-burdened 25 labor rate for a senior biologist retained
to conduct the bird counts manually would be on the order of $100/hr - roughly five times the
hourly rate for using the radar to do the sampling. Given the goal of a 10 hour/week sampling
level-of-effort (Matt Klope, personal communication), the cost of using the biologists to make
these observations over a five-year period would be $260K. The cost of using the avian radar for
the same level-of-effort would be $52K – a savings of ~$200K. The fact that the radar detects
50-times as many birds as the human observers for a given unit-of-time (Section 6.2.1.5) greatly
increases this disparity on a cost-per-bird basis.
25
“Fully-burdened” includes the cost of labor plus the cost of benefits, cost-of-living allowance, administrative
costs, etc. We estimated the fully-burdened labor rate by using the salary of a GS-9/Step 1 civil servant, multiplying
it by two to obtain a burdened rate, and then compared that estimate to the cost of an equivalent labor rate for a
contractor using Independent Government Cost Estimate guidelines.
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