P2-SWE-XII

Tailoring for Arctic region users

Per Høeg,Kirsti Kauristi, Peter Wintoft, Magnus Wik, Claudia Borries, Hiroatsu Sato

Objectives

Identify how the ESA Space Situational Awareness Programme (SSA) customer requirements need to be enhanced and tailored for the end-users in the Arctic region, and describe how these requirements can be fulfilled.

Suggest a roadmap for the development of future and existing Arctic region SSA services.

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Tailoring ESA Expert Service Centres (SWE) Services for the Arctic Regions

Approach:

Three SWE documents and databases perform the basis for the study:

1. Customer Requirement Document (CRD)

2. Product Specification Document (PSD)

3. System Requirement Document (SRD)

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Participants in the End-Users Survey

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End-User Categories

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Outcome of the User Survey

All together 60 proposed modifications

37 were associated with actual Customer Requirements descriptions (CRs)19 with the other fields (Justification, Comment, Related requirement, etc.)4 were obsolete

For TIO

• 18 proposed enhancements, from which 4 for service, 5 for data and 9 for performance

For GEN

• 22 proposed enhancements, from which 2 for service, 12 for data and 8 for model

For NSO• 13 proposed enhancements, from which10 for service and 2 for data and 1 for performance

(for Pipeline and Power 1, for Aviation 4, for Exploration 6, for Auroral tourism 1)

For LAU• 3 proposed enhancements, from which 1 for service, 1 for data and 1 for performance

For SST• 2 proposed enhancements for services

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Tailoring the SWE system and the product requirements

Tasks:

Identification of changes in the SRD and PSD due to changes in the CRD

In case of SWE system changes, the proposed change will be critically assessed and iterated in coordination with ESA

Presentation of analyses justifying the changes and description of system impacts

Identify gaps between existing services and user needs with respect to physical parameters, availability, accuracy, timeliness, and in case of predictions, the prediction lead-time

Describe the incorporation of the service with the SWE Portal and the relation with the ESCs, and propose an implementation using European space weather assets

Provide a list of gaps identified in the existing assets

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Results

60 CRs were specified during the project

• 26 caused no update to the SRD/PSD

• 29 new and 9 updated CRs

• 11 new and 15 updated SRs

• 5 new and 1 updated PS

Only Customer Requirements (CRs) with new/updated definition were analysed

Suggested changes of the SRD/PSD were discussed and approved by ESA during monthly technical meetings

New or updated SRs/PSs were entered in the ESA DOORS requirements management system

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Developing the Roadmap

Applied procedure:

• Definition of Arctic services, fulfilling the Arctic requirements

• Assignment of key assets for each service

• Establishing matrices, identifying how Arctic requirements are completely or partially fulfilled by existing or planned ESCs service

• Performed a gap analysis

• Established roadmaps for each service

• Performed an identification of critical items and gaps

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Approach

Identification

of requirements and products

Review

of the maturity of assets

Clarificationof fulfilled

requirements and gaps

Development

of the roadmap

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Recommendations

• The demand of 24/7 availability are a major challenge for Arctic SWE service and data providers

• Persistent Arctic SWE monitoring needs to be a federated solution with national contributions

• Controversial messages from 3rd party service providers may lead to interpretations of results and space weather information in not a consistent way

• We need short-term forecasts with high confidence and long-term services with larger error bars

• Some terms in the SRD/PSD are not defined or are confusing

• The specifications in the CRD does not always match terminology used in the SRD/PSD

• The mapping from the CRD to the SRD and PSD more complex than anticipated

• Some difficulties arose due to errors in the SRD and PSD

• We suggest to update the definitions and units in the SRD and PSD to match the CRD

• These new SRs and PSs should strengthen the SSA programme for Arctic users

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Recommendations

• Define a dedicated domain for Arctic applications that would maintain all tailored services

• The quality of the Assets Database browsing/categorizing function makes it hard for users to find relevant product

• Inconsistent structure of SRD and SRD, the source CRD and SRD sometimes do not fall into the same service/categories

• There are missing links to the assets in the Asset Database. This should be fixed especially for operational-type assets

• Who takes responsibility/ownership for adding assets in the Asset Database?

• There is a need of an evaluation system for the achievement of observations, data, and services

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Thank you !

Tailoring ESA Expert Service Centres (SWE) Services for the Arctic Regions

The Customer Requirement Document (CRD) identifies eight SWE service domains and end user groups:

1. Spacecraft design (SCD): Personnel involved in generating space environment specifications for the design of spacecraft.

2. Spacecraft operation (SCO): Flight Control Teams, operations support engineers, and science operations centre teams of European and national space agencies, public and private spacecraft operators.

3. Human space flight (SCH): The operation teams of human spaceflight including during launch, activities inside and outside of the ISS, future space tourism flight operators and future human missions in outer space. It is anticipated that they will be represented by space agencies and European entities operating sub-orbital or orbital flights for space tourists, e.g. EADS-ST, Virgin Galactic.

4. Launch operation (LAU): Personnel involved in launch operation. It is anticipated that they will be represented by space agencies and European entities operating launchers, e.g. Arianespace, EADS-ST, Virgin Galactic.

5. Trans ionospheric radio link (TIO): Service users from space-based systems using electromagnetic waves propagating through the ionosphere and for which service performance may be affected by ionosphere disturbances due to space weather events. The main users are GNSS but also some satellite communication and earth observation services are included.

6. SSA Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST): Personnel involved in the Space Surveillance and Tracking segment of the SSA system. This is therefore a space weather service internal to SSA.

7. Non-space systems operation (NSO): Such as pipeline, power grid operators, surveying industry, airlines.

8. General data service (GEN): Expert users in the space industry, third party service providers in a range of domains, the education sector and the general public (including amateur radio/disaster monitoring-communication)

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Tailoring ESA Expert Service Centres (SWE) Services for the Arctic Regions

The two-step survey led to 60 suggestions for changes and modifications to the ESA CRD.

Here are some of the 46 survey statements:

Enhancement Service Domain

CRD Req. or Chapter

1 Volumetric information on electron density would be useful to get disturbance level at the future piercing point altitude.

TIO 2652, 1641, 1652

2 Forecasts of extreme ionospheric conditions (not just geomagnetic) are needed

TIO 1637

3 Uncertainties for TEC information (for TEC and their variability) and TEC maps should be suitable also for automatic analysis (besides visual inspection); Visualization tools should allow flexible zooming of the images.

TIO, SEG 1633, 1638, 1740, 1786, 1505, 1506

4 Alarms on ionospheric disturbances should be disseminated with very short delay times (within seconds)

TIO 1650-1653

5 In scintillations also short periods of disturbances (starting from one second) are important. Both phase and amplitude scintillations are important (Request from a representative from the user group SWE-CRD-TIO-05).

TIO 1650-1653, 1635

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Survey Statements

Enhancement Service Domain

CRD Req. or Chapter

6 TEC maps should not have longer updating rate than 15 min (also for the users of single frequency receivers without integrity). Both visual images and numerical data would be useful

TIO 1650-1652

7 TEC forecasts with 1-2 days lead times would already be useful (current CRD requirement is 7 days, TBC)

TIO 1633

8 Validation of the TEC map accuracy is needed. Tolerable TEC error: < 5 TECU (feedback from a company using RTK) or 10-20% in relative scale (feedback from a 3rd party service provider);

TIO 1633, 1634

9 In the service of radiation storms attention should be paid also to proton energies below 10 MeV (e.g. starting from 1 MeV protons) to support decision making in some scientific rocket campaigns.

LAU 1614

10 In the forecasts of interplanetary high energy proton and electron fluxes and magnetic field for the LAU domain, the updating rate should be higher than 30 min. Updating with 5 min would be adequate.

LAU 1629

11 Refraction, scintillation, and group delay can, in principle, all affect tracking capabilities. For the current EISCAT the operations the frequencies 224 MHz, 500 MHz, and 930 MHz will be important. For the future EISCAT_3D frequencies around 233 MHz will be important. These frequencies should be taken into account in SWE modelling efforts.

SST 1657, 1658

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Survey Statements

Enhancement Service Domain

CRD Req. or Chapter

12 In SST accurate timing will be needed and the plan is to make use of time distribution via GNSS. Even short time ionospheric disturbances (scintillation) will influence radar operations. In EISCAT_3D the influence will be even larger since accurate timing will be needed at several stations (in northern Norway, Sweden and Finland).

TIO 1652, 1635

13 Volumetric information on electron density would be crucial to give reliable estimates on disturbances due to refraction, group delay and scintillation. E-region densities and gradients can vary on time scales of the order of seconds and spatial scales on the order of kilometers, both vertically and horizontally. F-region densities and gradients do not vary as quickly as those in E-layer, but the structures can have rather high propagation speeds (~1 km/s). The relevant spatial scales vary from tens of km (vertical) to hundreds of km (horizontal)

TIO 2652, 1641, 1652

14 Auroral forecasts should be distributed also as widgets so that they can be integrated easily to different web-layouts.

NSO 1760

15 Also summaries/archives on the issued forecasts should be available for post validation purposes, e.g. for skill score determination (with restricted access). There also needs to be an archived version control designator on the forecasting algorithms so that changes can be taken into account in statistical post-forecast analyses.

GEN, SEG 1678, 1505

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Survey StatementsEnhancement Service

Domain CRD Req. or Chapter

16 In general data services riometer measurements or data products derived from riometer data would be very useful for the direct observation of D-layer absorption during Polar Cap Absorption events, for example. They would also act as a proxy for the impact of gamma ray bursts (e.g. from magnetar events) on the ionosphere.

GEN Chapter 13.3

17 More accurate specifications for the locations of magnetospheric magnetic and electric field measurements would be welcome (e.g. acceleration region phenomena would be valuable to probe). Also wave activity should be included which would mean AC measurements in addition to DC measurements. These measurements would help to achieve better understanding on the magnetospheric processes causing large ground dB/dt at auroral latitudes.

GEN Chapter 13.3

18 Additional data sets to be added to the General Data Services: Neutral atmosphere temperature and wind, TEC and scintillation, Global high-latitude convection/electric field, Polar Cap index (with the condition that general agreement on the PC definition has been achieved), ionospheric conductances or at least the ratio of Hall to Pedersen conductance.

GEN Chapter 13.3

19 Additional modules to the modelling framework in General Data Services: ionosphere-thermosphere-mesosphere coupling; Polar Cap Absorption events; Polar cap patches; Sun-aligned arcs and associated shears in the polar cap convection; Model for high latitude convection (using L1 solar wind data as input); Auroral absorption events and ionospheric substorms;

GEN, TIO Chapter 13.4, 1636

20 Interplanetary Scintillation data for forecasts of solar wind velocity beyond L1 would be very useful

GEN Chapter 13.3

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Survey Statements

Enhancement Service Domain

CRD Req. or Chapter

21 General data services should have both warnings on forth-coming enhanced activity and alarms when the activity actually starts (c.f. NOAA SWPC)

GEN 2654

22 To improve coverage of measurements, underwater magnetometers, or rather the method for provision of real-time data from them is important

GEN Chapter 13.3

23 Also important is the ambient solar wind (absence of eruptive phenomena) for high latitude. So the modeling frame-work in the general data services should include simple background conditions without the spectacular space weather phenomena.

GEN Chapter 13.4

24 Ray-tracing code for RF wave propagation in a realistic polar ionosphere (based on observations) would be valuable to have in the modelling system.

GEN Chapter 13.4

25 In the case of pipeline operators SWE services which monitor or predict global activity in general level have appeared to be more useful than tailored services

NSO 1745, 1747

26 For RTK applications forecasts with >5 min lead times start to become useful,

TIO 1633

27 Services supporting RTK with information on ionospheric variability would need more high-latitude measurement points

TIO 1633, 1650, 1651, 1634

28 For the user group SWE-CRD-TIO-USR-05 updating rates of the TEC and Scintillation products should not be longer than 5 min.

TIO 1652

29 Two types of measurements that would be useful for characterising the high-latitude ionosphere are radar imaging of the ionosphere and in-situ measurements (by satellite) of the ionosphere.

TIO Chapter 10.3

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Survey Statements

Enhancement Service Domain

CRD Req. or Chapter

30 Spectral parameters of scintillation would be useful to calculate impact on receivers

TIO 1640

31 The network of baseline stations for RTK would be nice to extend to cover North Sea, Barents Sea as well as the Polar Cap (Svalbard and Greenland)

TIO, NSO Chapters 10.3, 10.4, 12.3,

32 3rd party service providers will need a general “Statement of Guidance” on how to interpret and present modelling results to their customers

GEN Chapter 13.4

33 When putting up the archives for general data services, data from existing satellites (Cluster and Swarm) should be utilized. For SWE research with multi-satellite analyses knowledge on events when the two satellite missions were magnetically conjugated would be helpful.

GEN Chapter 13.3

34 The modelling framework of General data services should not address only global parameters, but it should include also models to describe the great variability of the polar ionosphere on spatial and temporal scales (e.g., polar cap patches, auroral arcs etc).

GEN Chapter 13.4

35 Power grid operators’ wish is to get forecasts of IMF Bz turnings to negative with 5 day lead time and with an accuracy in timing of +/- 6 hours. Probabilistic approach is the most reasonable way to provide such forecasts (“turning will happen with the probability of XX%”) and the performance of the service should be evaluated with some appropriate skill score system.

NSO 1746, 2640

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Survey Statements

Enhancement Service Domain

CRD Req. or Chapter

36 Tailored GIC/PSP services should not be totally omitted from the SSA-SWE plans, as they may be useful for smaller power companies, whose resources to conduct such studies by themselves may be limited.

NSO 1744, 1745, 1747, 1748

37 Disseminating validated education material is not important only for educating the user community but also in communication between the different 3rd party service providers. Therefore the material should contain in addition to the basic SWE lessons also information for more advanced users (e.g. experiences gathered in the usage of the models which the General Data Services will provide)

GEN 1681

38 Ground-based auroral camera images should be available in the General Data services. Auroral nowcasts and forecasts to support tourism business at high latitudes is an important aspect in SWE operations and 3rd party services providers will certainly have interests to build tailored services for their own customers

GEN 1709

39 Information about degraded communication and navigation should be provided in a format compatible with GNSS augmentation systems (SBAS and EGNOS) so that their performance gets improved also in the Arctic region.

NSO 1753-1755

40 Forecasts of >5hr periods of “all quiet” conditions would be useful for resource exploitation

NSO 1758, 1759

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Survey Statements

Enhancement Service Domain

CRD Req. or Chapter

41 For Transionospheric radio link user group SWE-CRD-TIO-USR-06, the demands for time and space resolution and availability should be at least as good as for the user group SWE-CRD-TIO-USR-04.

TIO 1652

42 When searching new sites for GPS, magnetometer and riometer stations regions which have strong presences of industrial users should be prioritized (Svalbard and Greenland).

TIO, NSO Chapters 10.3, 10.4, 12.3,

43 TEC and scintillation forecasts of 2-3 days would be useful for resource exploration, but the confidence levels should be high.

NSO 1754-1755

44 Confidence levels of alerts on high geomagnetic activity should be ~100% otherwise they are not useful in oil drilling activities.

NSO 1758

45 A separation of 100 km between magnetometers have proven successful in the past for directional drilling purposes. The greatest challenge in the Arctic is the planned off-shore operations in the Barents Sea. Here the gas and oil fields (eg. Johan Castberg field, Hop, Shtockman, etc.) are too far from the coast to enable use of existing instruments. The solution is under water magnetometers located in the vicinity of the oil rigs using the rig infrastructure to communicate real-time data to the service provider.

NSO 1758, 1761, Chapters12.3, 12.4

46 More information on soil conductances (telluric measurements) in Arctic Region is needed for geoelectric field calculations.

NSO, GEN 1748, 2596, Chapter 13.3

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