Speaker
Description
With research showing that solar storms can have devastating consequences for today's technical infrastructure and due to increased observed effects in various domains including air traffic and critical infrastructure, the importance of space weather is rising.
To investigate on this topic in Austria, the Space Weather Austrian Platform (SWAP) project was founded, forming a national competence group connecting researchers, end-users and stakeholders in the field of space weather. Synergies between research groups are promoted, while input from end-users and stakeholders is leveraged to guide future applied research topics and increase resilience. The competence group brings together the state-of-the-art in the domain, specifically in a national context, identifies current and future research questions in close cooperation with impacted stakeholders and supports the resilience against severe events.
The Austrian Space Weather Platform provides an overview on existing information, latest research and conditions on space weather specifically prepared according to national user needs while disseminating information that is accessible and relevant also to the general public. Especially during the latest severe events (May and October 2024), the competence group demonstrated its viability, covering operational forecasting and warning services to affected stakeholders, processing the effects on end-users and analysing the events from various angles at the national level. The platform proved to be an important source of information for Austria’s citizen, especially on the topic of aurora sightings.
In this poster contribution, we showcase the competence group, the created platform and the outcomes of this successful national space weather project.
