The primary objectives of the Naval Aviation Simulation Master Plan Portable Source Initiative (NPSI) are to increase visual database reuse, promote standardization, and lower life cycle acquisition costs for new system acquisitions, legacy platform trainer procurements, and major trainer visual upgrades. The NPSI datasets capture the prepared/corrected/refined visual source data in standard formats for reuse by other platforms. The NPSI datasets include imagery, elevation data, feature data, 3-D models, and metadata. The datasets are stored in the NPSI Archive, which currently contains three NPSI datasets along with additional imagery layers. In addition, there are several procurements underway that will deliver enhanced or new NPSI datasets.

The intent of this paper is to propose quality assurance testing procedures and standards for examining NPSI Datasets for placement into the archive. The quality assurance suite of tests will involve the various layers and the metadata that combine to make a NPSI Dataset. The testing will be utilized to evaluate datasets for compliance, to determine how the data will be archived and to provide information to evaluate the data for future reuse. NPSI datasets, and the results of quality assurance testing, will be made available to contractors at Request For Proposal (RFP) to allow the contractor to better evaluate the NPSI Dataset against program requirements, and make a realistic determination of data quality and potential for reuse, and assess additional effort required for each future program.