Several studies have shown that Europe has significant assets to support Space Weather research and services. However, these assets are dispersed over many countries and organisations. In the absence of a leading unifying body, this implies that, unfortunately, not the most is yet made out of these rich and diverse assets. However, several initiatives have been taken to remedy this situation and significant progress has been made. In this presentation, we aim to contribute to these efforts.

We will present an overview of some important European resources for space weather applications, concerning both scientific research and service provision. The overview will highlight various aspects: data availability and access tools, s, research facilities and services.

Access to reliable standardized observational data that characterize the Earth’s ionosphere - plasmasphere system is of vital importance for theoretical and applied geospace research, including space weather nowcasting and forecasting, and a key issue for various operational applications relevant to satellite navigation, earth observation and telecommunications. A strong demand from relevant research communities for free and organized access to research infrastructures observing the ionosphere and the plasmasphere is apparent in order to perform experiments and organize special campaigns, for the investigation of specific geophysical problems in combination with routine observations, and for the systematic development testing and validation of reliable models for the near-earth plasma environment up to geosynchronous heights. EURIPOS project aims to provide a wider and more efficient access to and use of the ground based ionospheric sounders and the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers existing in different European countries and to coordinate and optimize their operation and evolution as well as their interaction with the users. Through the development of improved services provided to the researchers, EURIPOS will be a unique infrastructure for the observation and study of the ionosphere and the plasmasphere, not only at European level but also internationally having a structuring impact on the European Area of Geospace Research. It will be used as a testbed for the development of a new generation of models and tools designed to improve the specification, forecasting and prediction of the near-Earth geospace environment, while assisting in the identification of new research communities with future trends and requirements. EURIPOS is a distributed infrastructure consisting of 14 European ionospheric stations and of a dense network of the dual frequency GNSS receivers operated in Europe by the project partners, assisted by the permanent European GNSS networks.

The EXPOSE facility supports long term in situ studies of microbes in artificial meteorites as well as of microbial communities from special ecological niches, such as endolithic and endoevaporitic ecosystems. EXPOSE is mounted on the European Technology Exposure Facility (EuTEF) located on the external plate of Columbus laboratory of International Space Station (ISS). The Radiation Risks Radiometer-Dosimeter (for European EXPOSE facility) (R3DE) inside the EXPOSE facility is an active, low mass and small dimensions device, which measure solar radiation in 4 channels and space ionizing radiation. The four-channel: UV-A (315-400 nm), UV-B (280-315 nm), UV-C (<280 nm) and Photosynthetic Active Radiation (PAR) (400-700 nm) filter dosimeter measure the solar UV irradiance in W/m². The deposited energy spectra of the space ionizing radiation are measured by a Liulin type 256-channel spectrometer. The analysis of the spectra gives the total dose in µGy/hour and the particle flux in cm^-2.s^-1. Measurements of the UV and ionizing radiation parameters have 10 second time resolution and are transmitted by the ISS telemetry system to the ground since 20th of February 2008. In the paper the new results for the ISS radiation environment obtained by the R3DE are analyzed, which can be summarized as follows: 1) because of very low solar activity the Galactic comic rays component (GCR) of doses at high latitudes is raised almost twice up to 12 µGy/hour in comparison with similar measurements in 2001; 2) For first time on the station electron fluxes with energies above 0.5 MeV (relativistic electrons) were observed. The measured absolute maximums of the doses generated by them reached 19195 µGy/hour at flux of 8363 cm^-2 s^-1 behind less than 0.4 g.cm^-2 shielding. These doses are about 1600 times larger than the GCR doses and are a real risk for the health of cosmonauts and astronauts, which perform Extravehicular activity (EVA) around the station; 3) The doses observed on descending orbits in the region of the South atlantic anomaly (SAA) are about 30% larger than the doses at ascending orbits. This asymmetry is generated by the different shielding of the instrument detector, which surface is orientated perpendicularly to the +Z axes of the station; 4) The fluxes generated by heavier than hydrogen ions in the region of SAA was found to be 3% of the total flux. This result is obtained by new spectrum analysis procedure.

LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) is a new radio interferometer being constructed in the northern part of the Netherlands and throughout Europe. It utilizes a phased array design whereby the signals from stations consisting of many individual dipoles are combined digitally to form multiple, independent beams on the sky. From its inception, the LOFAR project has been designed to provide a wide range of scientific capabilities to its astronomical users. These capabilities include not only traditional interferometric imaging but also the ability to detect radio transients on short timescales, radio emission from cosmic ray-induced particle showers, efficient surveys for pulsars, and real-time solar monitoring to name a few. Supporting this scientific diversity requires an innovative and extremely flexible system capable of dynamic scheduling, real-time response, and multiple concurrent observations.

LOFAR's real-time observing capabilities represent a valuable potential resource to the Space Weather community. For example, with LOFAR it will be possible to routinely monitor solar activity in the radio from 10-240 MHz on microsecond timescales. Similarly, the strong effects of the ionosphere on radio data at LOFAR's low operating frequencies create a natural connection to the ionospheric community. As part of its standard calibration procedure, LOFAR expects to produce an updated ionospheric over the array on timescales from minutes to seconds. Any or all of these data could potentially be exported to the Space Weather community. In this talk, we will provide an overview of the scientific observing modes currently planned for LOFAR as well as provide an update on the capabilities of the system now and in the coming year.

The SuperDARN project provides since several years numerous inputs to Space Weather Science, such as solar wind-magnetosphere coupling, location of magnetospheric boundaries, occurrence of radar echoes in relation with solar wind conditions. Moreover, SuperDARN provides some space wheather real-time data products: high latitude ionospheric convection maps and polar cap potential, high latitude HF propagation conditions, mesospheric winds (meteor echoes). This paper briefly describes the SuperDARN products and presents a comprehensive description of an event caused by a solar wind disturbance.

An increase in the rate of space-weather related anomalies and failures related to large variations of Dst have been identified in recent years. The next solar maximum should peak around year 2010. Solar activity cycle 24 is expected to be much higher than average and lots of geomagnetic disturbances are expected to take place soon in the terrestrial environment. This fact led us to develop a new forecasting procedure, which provides trustworthy results in predicting large variations of Dst index over a sample of 10 years of observations and is based on the value Bz only. The proposed forecasting method appears as a worthy tool for space weather purposes because it is not affected by the lack of solar wind plasma data, which usually occurs during severe geomagnetic activity.

Since (Approx) 2000 the paragigm of virtual observatories has spread well beyondits initial application to astronomy and is now evident in ecology, geologyand more generally geosciences. The simplest idea of the virtual observatory, whereby diverse and distributed data holdings in a particular science discipline or sub-discipline are virtually presented to an end-user as though they appear to be coming from a single sources, is very attractive in the current data environment which is characterized by complexity, heterogeneity and size. For fields such as space weather which cover several disciplines, types of measurements and models, the challenge and thus need is even greater. This talk will present current and future virtual observatory capabilities drawn on several application areas and indicate the opportunities for research and near real-time use of virtual observatories for space weather applications.

Heliophysics is a new science that explores the Sun-Solar System connection. It spans the existing domains of solar, heliospheric, magnetospheric and ionospheric physics and has close links with planetary and geo-sciences. Establishing a virtual observatory to support this science therefore involves issues that are a superset of those related to (terrestrial) Space Weather.

In this talk we will discuss how heliophysics will allow us to more fully address the underlying causes of space weather phenomea. We will also review the resources that are currently available, the difficulties associated with conducting searches that span communities and what steps could be undertaken to improve interoperability of resources in the medium to long term.

The International Space Station is one of the largest human enterprises in space; its laboratories have started to and will, in the future, provide us with unprecedented amounts of scientific data that will provide profound insights in many science disciplines, such as Life and Physical Sciences and of course Space Science, proper. The ULISSE project is aimed at ensuring an effective exploitation of the data, including the archived data from previous experiments on the ISS and other platforms, as Space Shuttle, Spacelab and sounding rockets. This exploitation, although primarily for scientific purposes will also include dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge and its transfer to educational entities.

The primary focus of the project is on downstream research aiming at the optimal scientific exploitation of data and for the improvement of public awareness by:
- Providing powerful, knowledge based access to archived scientific data
- Enabling innovation by easing the process of acquiring and understanding heterogeneous data and using and interacting with knowledge and processes implicit to this data
- Establishing tools to archive, access, interact with and process data obtained from a variety of multidisciplinary sources and, in general, to enable the straightforward valorization of data
- Mobilizing the best expertise for the analysis and interpretation of space science data in single and multidisciplinary domains with specific disseminating actions

We present AMDA (Automated Mutli-Dataset Analysis), a new service recently opened at CDPP. AMDA is a web-based facility for on line analysis of space physics data coming from either its local database or distant ones. This tool allows the user to perform on line classical manipulations such as data visualization, parameter computation or data extraction. AMDA also offers innovative functionalities such as event search on the content of the data in either visual or automated way. These functionalities extendable for automated recognition of specific signatures can be used for performing classification of events and for generating time-tables and catalogues. These time-tables/catalogues can be seen as a brick of up-coming virtual observatories in space physics and space weather studies.

The dense GPS networks developed for geodesic applications appear to be very efficient ionospheric sensors because of interaction between plasma and electromagnetic waves. Indeed, the dual frequency receivers provide data from which the Slant Total Electron Content (STEC) can be easily extracted to compute Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) maps. The SPECTRE project, Service and Products for ionospheric Electron Content and Tropospheric Refractivity over Europe, is currently an operational service providing VTEC maps with high time and space resolution after 3 days time delay (http://www.noveltis.fr/spectre). This project is a part of SWENET, SpaceWeather European Network, initiated by the European Space Agency. In this frame, we present the algorithms implemented to compute VTEC maps and we evaluate the quality of these maps. Indeed, VTEC maps produced by SPECTRE are validated by comparing TEC estimations of several instruments like ionosondes, altimeter satellites and Global Ionosphere Maps (GIMs) supported by International GNSS Service (IGS). The results are discussed in term of estimation biases for each method of TEC measurements. Moreover, we demonstrate that Regional Ionosphere Maps (RIMs) produced by SPECTRE provide a better resolution of small scale variations of the ionosphere than GIMs. Thus, The SPECTRE data products are useful for many applications which are discussed in term of interest for the scientific community with a special focus on spaceweather and transient ionospheric perturbations related to natural hazards (earthquakes, tsunamis). Here, we present studies on the extreme magnetic storms of October, 2003 and November, 2004. Moreover, we present studies on post-seismic perturbations induced in the ionosphere by earthquakes in Japan and by the December, 2004, Sumatra tsunami. Finally, we present the required developments and the expected economic incomings for this spaceweather service.

This presentation describes the development of a Real-Time GIC Simulator to provide information about geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) in a power system to help system controllers prevent power outages during geomagnetic disturbances. The Simulator uses real-time geomagnetic data as input and convolves this with an Earth impulse response to calculate the electric fields experienced by the power system. These are then used as input to a power system model to calculate the GIC throughout the system. Real-time maps are produced showing the GIC in the transmission lines and the GIC flowing to ground at substations. A prototype system has been implemented for the power grid in Ontario Canada, in collaboration with the grid operator, Hydro One. Public web pages have also been produced to demonstrate the Simulator process using a generic network. A cost/benefit analysis shows that the cost of the Simulator is small compared to the benefit of avoiding problems during geomagnetic disturbances.