SWPC Interactions with Commercial Vendors

Principles

SWPC has the unique role to issue the nation's official civilian space weather alerts and warnings
SWPC describes and predicts the state of the space environment and its phenomena (say, a geomagnetic storm) but not the expected effects of that phenomena on specific systems (say, induced currents at a given location).
SWPC does not withhold acquired or calculated information about the space environment except that:
SWPC determines the appropriate temporal cadences and spacial resolutions for the products and data it disseminates.
SWPC considers customer interest, parameters' validity, and tolerable volumes of calculation, communication, and storage as it determines what to issue.
SWPC honors restrictions on releasing data from other sources.
SWPC reports the quality of the space environment information it disseminates (e.g., skill scores, uncertainties, percent outages, etc.) where known.
SWPC offers all users, including vendors, the same spectrum of options.

Caveats

SWPC has unique relationships with some of its partners who may be U.S. national or international government agencies or providers of information and services to SWPC.

SWPC cannot control the uses to which its information is put by others (redistribution, provision of value-added products, etc.)

Space environment data, even that which originates from SWPC, may be available from other sources.

SWPC may form partnerships with individuals or entities that can provide services that help SWPC perform its mission; these may be contractual (CRADA, SBIR) or informal (a mirrored Web site).

Planned

Modeled energetic particle fluxes in Earth's equatorial plane; issue gridded output every 3 hours within an hour after the period described (April 13, 1998)

Revise SWPC's Web site index page and second-level pages (initiated April 20, 1998)

Issue geomagnetic storm warnings (based on ACE RTSW data) (initiated July 1998)

Publish Information Dissemination System (IDS) interface specifications ("beta version" October 1998; final version by end of 1Q 1999).

Issue predict Kp and information about its accuracy (initiate Jan. 1999)

Information Dissemination System (IDS) available fro public use (prototype Jan. 1999; configuration-controlled, stable version by end of 1Q 1999).

Under Consideration, depending on customer interest

Decrease delay in description of energetic particle flux at the equator, perhaps making it predictive (approximately 1 hour in advance). Perhaps extend calculations to positions away from the equatorial plane.

Predict the daily background solar wind speed and magnetic polarity at Earth, tow or more days in advance.

Issue additional products driven by real-time solar wind. For example:
shock detection and arrival time at Earth as appropriate (depending on the solar
wind data reliability)
derived products (e.g., Akasofu's e parameter, predicted Dst, AE)

Disseminate energetic particle data from sensors on DMSP satellites in near-real time.

Develop products for trans-ionospheric radio propagation (e.g., prediction of onset time, strength, and location of scintillations).

Predict intensity and location of the auroral electrojet.