An investigation into how space weather operational centre products meet end-user needs

Abstract

Potential beneficiaries of the COSPAR Space Weather Roadmap can be classified in two groups – 1) operational space weather service providers, which can be viewed as direct users of the science developed through the COSPAR roadmap process; 2) end-users such as the electricity and satellites sectors whose requirements should define the metrics and parameters delivered through the products of space weather service providers, which therefore are intimately linked to the focus and evolution of the COSPAR roadmap.With regard to Group (1), interaction with COSPAR that feeds Group 2 requirements into the roadmap process may be enhanced via specific activities such as:•Participation in COSPAR bodies such as the Panel on Space Weather and ISWAT.•Participation in ISES and WMO space weather teams that are increasingly engaging with COSPAR to better coordinate research and operational space weather activities.•Promoting actions to ensure the R2O-O2R circle is complete - this may include adopting specific R2O-O2R actions or best-practice identified through WMO, ISES, or COSPAR activities that may also be effectively used to focus future iterations of COSPAR space weather roadmaps.Group 2 members often exist at one step further removed from the research community (i.e., they typically speak to operational service providers (Group (1) and these service providers interact with the research community), so there is a risk that their requirements are not fully addressed by the operational service providers and of a disconnect with the research community. To strengthen the research/operational centre/end-user chain, we first need to know how the operational centres and end-users interact, via a survey. Following this, we can better target research to support operational centres and understand how the research to end-user connections may be improved.In this paper, we describe such a survey and present the results. The survey focuses on the level of engagement between operational centres and end-users, end-user views of the quality of existing services, and their views on how further research can be exploited to better meet their requirements. We focus on the six key end-user sectors of Power, Aviation, Satellites, HF communications, GNSS, and Aurora Watchers. Via these examples, the connection from end-user impacts through to operations through to research requirements can be clarified. We further summarise the survey findings in terms of the end-user impact pathways defined in Schrijver et al. (2015).