On April 25, Michaela Brchnelová from the Dutch Defence will give an STCE seminar on Space Weather research in Defense and discuss possible collaborations.
Contact: Yana Maneva
Title: Space weather research in Defense and possible collaborations
Abstract:
Space weather is a fascinating domain academically, but a terrifying domain operationally.
Especially if we consider SW from the operational perspective, many questions that are crucial for the evaluation of space weather risks on our systems remain still to this day unanswered. These range from "simple" statistical questions ("how often are our systems affected, and how severely?") to questions inherently tied to the quality of our space weather tools such as forecasts and models ("how well can we forecast/ model these SW effects and which forecasts/ models are actually useful from the operational standpoint?"). Ultimately, all of this information is needed from each operational domain (radio/ radar, SATCOM, SATOPS, MAD, etc.) for us to evaluate the corresponding space weather risks and attempt to mitigate these where the risks are deemed too high.
Next to these many unknowns, we are now also facing the challenge of our European SW infrastructure and services being highly dependent on the resources from the US. It is now more urgent than ever to recognise these vulnerabilities and start developing alternatives (where possible) that our operations can fall back on should the access to these US resources be cut or otherwise limited. In some other cases, we also see that European alternatives already do exist, but are not actually used by our users and operators - in which case we have to identify what the reasons behind this are and push for the corresponding changes.
In this seminar, I will discuss some of these challenges and outline what we are planning to do (or what we already are doing) to start tackling them one by one. Given the current geopolitical climate, efficiency and speed in addressing these topics is key. I am also very open to collaboration and will be curious to hear the remarks and suggestions from the audience. If there is a right time to collaborate to get things done in Europe, it is now.
When: April 25, 11:00
Where: ROB Director’s House
Online: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86542876711?pwd=VakmbLxjDjsoWHYuKebyyybPXvbrow.1
