market analysis final report v1.1 - ESA Space Weather Web Server

ESA SW Programme Study Market Analysis
Final Report
These third parties can be either public or commercial organisations. A clear example of this
is in the power distribution industry which is seeing the introduction of commercial systems
for the modelling and management of SW data and its impact on wide area power grids.
2.3.3 Current modelling capability
In spite of the number of scientific and commercial models that exist, the SW community is,
by its own admission, still some way from the complete satisfaction of user needs. It may be
that user needs are not sufficiently well defined that this is so but still the sheer size of the
modelling task and the scarcity of data inputs ensure that a lot of work is still to be done.
Table 2-2 gives the NSWP assessment of the status of SW modelling for a range of SW
domains and products.
Warning Nowcast Forecast Post-analysis
Solar/interplanetary Fair/poor Fair/poor Fair/poor Fair
Magnetosphere Poor Fair/poor Poor Fair/poor
Ionosphere Poor Fair/poor Poor Fair
Neutral atmosphere Poor Fair/poor Poor Fair/poor
Table 2-2: Current capabilities for various levels of SW service according to the US
NSWP. The grading is poor, fair, good.
Table 2-2 indicates a level of immaturity and uncertainty about future capability that means it
is difficult to place a high confidence level on the potential size of the market for SW
information. The immediate need is product rather than market development and thus a
considerable and sustained emphasis on scientific research is still required. Until a deeper
understanding of the processes has been achieved, research will play a key role in
developing the models required to further the application of SW monitoring and modelling.
2.4 Defining the user
For the purposes of this document, users are defined as those with an interest in SW from a
commercial or operational point of view. Users in the science and research sense are not
included except where they are undertaking studies on behalf of commercial and operational
users.
2.5 Military interests in SW
It should be noted that military interests have not been addressed in this document. The role
of military organisations in support of SW initiatives (and other similar initiatives involving
satellite monitoring such as meteorology and satellite navigation) tends to be more complex
and fundamental than a simple supplier-customer relationship. It is certain that there would
be military interest in a European SW Programme for issues such as high frequency
communications outages but this document does not attempt to quantify or justify this
interest.
ESYS-ESYS-2000260-RPT-02
Issue 1.1
28 September 2001 9 ESYS