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1. Space Weather Pilot Project for ESA Member states and Canada
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1.  Space Weather Pilot Project for ESA Member states and Canada
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From: Eamonn Daly

ESA Space Environments and Effects Analysis Section
ESTEC
PO Box 299
2200AG Noordwijk
The Netherlands

28 April 2002

Dear colleague,

As you are no doubt aware, ESA has been investigating the needs for a co-ordinated
European Space Weather Applications Programme to address a variety of problems 
encountered in various European technological sectors due to the effects of space 
weather.

The purpose of this letter is to inform you of recent decisions within ESA and to outline 
the activities in the forthcoming pilot project for space weather applications. The
information contained here may be subject to modification in subsequent announcements. 

Discussions with ESA management, involving all ESA directorate, has resulted in internal 
approval of the concept of a pilot project. While the issues of preparing for a possible
space segment by performing more detailed system studies was a natural follow-on to 
the work of contractor and the SWWT , it was felt that the case for embarking on large
scale funding for applications was not yet made. The purpose of the pilot project should
therefore be to provide clear evidence for quantifiable benefits of a space weather 
applications programme. 

The pilot project seeks to develop a community of informed space weather service 
users through education, collaboration and initial development of key space weather
applications, based on existing or easily adaptable sources of data. At the end of the 
pilot project, a clear assessment will be made of the level of interest among European
users and the extent of the economic benefits of future programme elements. To do 
this a number of applications projects will be undertaken in key application areas. 
These will be selected following an announcement of opportunity (AO) and integrated 
in a network developed, supported and supervised by a separate contract which will 
also cover the development of a space weather provision infrastructure. The scheme 
is illustrated in the figure at the end of this letter.

The formal AO is expected to be issued within the next months and will allow 8 weeks 
for reply. Proposers will be responsible for identifying the sources, types and amounts 
of funding from commercial or public entities and arranging necessary agreements. In 
view of the time required for such agreements, potential proposers are encouraged to 
begin the process as soon as possible. The Agency will be able to co-fund up to 15 
projects up to an amount of 100kEuro. Contracts will be placed directly with the 
selected proposers, following negotiation.

Proposals will be treated confidentially. However, the proposer should be prepared to 
allow limited but sufficient detail on the proposal, if selected, to be included in the 
invitation to tender (ITT) for contracts which will develop the infrastructure and which
will perform the economic analyses. Therefore, the answers should clearly indicate which
parts are to be kept confidential during the ITT process. ESA ITTs are public documents.
The AO will be open to all ESA member states and Canada.

The AO will solicit proposals for development of services and capabilities addressing 
the needs of specific users. The developments should lead to an improved 
understanding in the user community of potential space weather effects, to the extent
that the users will be able to participate in an evaluation of the service at the end of 
the pilot project and contributions to the assessment of the economic benefit of the 
exisitng and potential future space weather services. 

Candidate user domains include:
- Ground based power distribution systems
- Prospecting
- Mobile communications systems and users
- Ground-to-ground communications
- Over-the-horizon radar
- Space-based communications services
- Space-based navigation services and users
- Spacecraft development and operations (including drag effects) 
- Scientific spacecraft users (instrument interference and campaign planning)
- Space launcher operators
- Manned space programmes
- Aircrew radiation exposure monitoring
- Aircraft avionics
- Spacecraft and launcher insurance
- General public and tourism

The answers to the AO should address the needs in each domain, the required data,
processing and product developments. Therefore the following are expected to be
considered:

· Development of the user community for space weather data in Europe.
· Establishment and use of key facilities on ground
· Establishment of necessary agreements with national agencies or institutes
· Definition of  interfaces and formats to a common service infrastructure
        to be provided by a separate infrastructure contract
· Contribution to design of the pilot project service architecture
· development of data collection, transmission, ingestion, processing and
        dissemination tools
· establish modelling hard/software requirements
· procure hardware
· establish models and computational tools 
· contribute to users assessment at end of pilot project
· recommendations for measurements and capabilities (computational)
· recommendations for any future programme

The main objectives of the contract which will unite all the service
"sub-projects" are to:

· Federate existing and develop new activities in a common network and
        develop the associate software infrastructure.
· Encourage synergy across domains between various users and service
        providers.
· Get detailed data on cost, impact of effects , cost of services and value
        (economic, strategic,...) of services.
· Assess user requirements for future development and identify technology
        requirements (esp. space based measurements).

We hope that you will be able to participate in this project which is a necessary
precursor to any ESA space weather applications programme. If you would like to
be more closely involved and kept informed on the progress of the preparations,
please reply to me. Furthermore, you may ask to become a member of a future
restructured Space Weather Working Team. In this case you should indicate which
of the domains mentioned in this letter you are interested in. Your name will then
be added to a matrix of SWWT members and their corresponding interests.

Yours sincerely

E.J. Daly
 

Original letter:
http://www.estec.esa.nl/wmwww/wma/spweather/esa_initiatives/pilotproject/announcement.pdf

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For a complete list of ESA Tender Actions, see:
   http://emits.esa.int

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Note: This newsletter is an initiative of the ESA Space Environments
and Effects Analysis Section ( http://www.estec.esa.nl/wmwww/wma) and
is a prototype mailing list intended to provide a forum for information
posting news of interest to the Space Weather community in Europe.

- SWEN contact group (keeping SWEN informed of news from other channels)
  is currently:

  Eamonn Daly, ESA (excluding science programme)
  Richard Marsden, ESA science programme
  Maurizio Candidi, CNR
  Paul Cannon, URSI-Commission G
  Mike Hapgood,  EGS
  Hannu Koskinen, SCOSTEP working group on Space weather
  Pierre Lantos, Observatory of Paris Meudon
  Henrik Lundstedt, Lund space weather center
  Goetz Paschmann, ISSI
  Jean-Yves Prado, CNES Programme Directorate
  Michael Rycroft, ISU
  Volker Bothmer, EGS-Solar Physics Secretary
  Wolfgang Baumjohann, IWF Graz, Austria
  Jinbin Cao, Chinese Space Weather Activity Representative
  Barbara Poppe, NOAA Space Environment Centre
  William Liu, Canadian Space Agency.

- SWEN archives are currently available on:

http://www.estec.esa.nl/wmwww/wma/spweather/SWEN/swen.html

http://www.lund.irf.se/HeliosHome/SWEN/spweuro.html
 

- Replies and submissions to this newsletter are welcomed and should be
  sent to:

  #swen@esa.int

- To subscribe to the newsletter send your email address
  to:

  #swen@esa.int

- Please update your e-mail address in the event of a change.
  Please send both your new and old e-mail address to the editor
  to ease updating of your file.

- We look forward to receiving your input.

  SWEN editor:

  Alexi Glover

  Co-Editor:

  Nadine Hoffmann

  SWEN manager:

  Alain Hilgers
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#swen@esa.int
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