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Duration: 8/2003-9/2005
Status: Concluded
Project Contact:
(ca3@uninova.pt)

Scientific Advisors: João Moura Pires, Ivan Dorotovic
Poster: (pdf)

SEIS: "Space Environment Information System" - Past Research Projects

News
29.11.2004
Participation on the First European Space Weather Workshop @ESTEC website

30.06.2004
Start of Operational Prototype Phase

28.06.2004
Design Prototype Review Meeting

25.05.2004
SDA Joint Progress Meeting @ESTEC

20.05.2004
Design Prototype Review Meeting scheduled to 28 and 29 of June

30.01.2004
Functional Prototype Review Meeting

12.12.2003
End of Functional Prototype phase (requirement definition phase).

01.10.2003
Prof. João Moura Pires is now collaborating on the project as Scientific Advisor.

29.08.2003
The SEIS Project is now officially listed in the ESTEC/ESA Space Weather Pilot Project website

21.08.2003
Start of the SEIS – Space Environment Information System for Mission Control Purposes project.

04.08.2003
Official kick-off of the SEIS project.

Project Summary
UNINOVA has been increasing its experience, with past and on-going projects at ESOC, in radiation monitoring and prediction and the usage of this information in the assessment of Solar cells degradation (details available at http://www.gtd.es/fuzzy). This, along with our combined expertise in Artificial Intelligence, Data Mining, Machine learning, Fuzzy Logic and Decision Support Systems (mainly data warehousing), are behind this identified opportunity (see (Ribeiro, Pires et al. 2002) for an overview of these technologies and possible future applications).

Our experience of current practices of mission operations at ESOC is that operators can benefit from systems that deliver relevant information and knowledge, usually not integrated in the mission control environment. Space weather data is definitely included. In addition, space weather data is not used in standard documented mission control processes:

  • This perception is also confirmed by the assessment of current practices performed in the feasibility studies of (see (Horne 2000) – page 33). Operators cannot reliably identify space weather as a cause of problems since they do not have enough expertise in space physics and information about the spacecraft environment.
  • The identified user need is to supplement the flight control team with space environmental information - past, current and forecast - already translated into spacecraft operational impact assessment and, in combination with spacecraft telemetry data, into suggested preventive or corrective operational procedure(s) (as defined in the S/C Flight Operation Plan) for implementation.
  • With the opportunity implicit in the previous statements in mind, UNINOVA has envisioned a solution which consists of:
    • Collecting historical and real-time space weather data coming from whatever sources are deemed relevant (opportunistic usage) for a specific operations context and integrate that data with the satellite telemetry and orbit.
    • Transform the Space Weather raw data into information and knowledge at higher levels of abstraction.
    • Develop a prototype system capable of delivering a set of space weather services designed for mission control purposes directly in the control room.

The user benefits include increased awareness of space weather cause & effect relationships; vis-à-vis on-board spacecraft health status; improved productivity and safety levels of satellite operations versus space weather environmental phenomena; increased science return and extended life time.

System Overview

The SEIS system will integrate data from different heterogeneous Space Weather data sources (NOAA, SOHO), Space Craft telemetry (XMM, ENVISAT, INTEGRAL), forecasting data and available Single Event Upset (SEU) databases’ data (from several missions). will be loaded into a Data Warehouse, which is the key storage block of the whole system.

The Knowledge Based System engine feeds on this data (frequently refreshed) and infers possible alarms and explanations while providing nowcasting capabilities, shown on a Monitoring Tool.Besides loading Space Weather forecasts, the SEIS system also incorporates a Model Manager component capable of building prediction models based on neural networks and generating predictions.

Although the majority of the tasks will be automatically performed, to ensure its usability, this architecture requires the presence of:

  • Domain expert capable of managing the represented knowledge on the Knowledge Based System
  • Database administrator, responsible for house-keeping activities on the Data Warehouse and MOLAP databases
  • Data mining expert, capable of building and maintaining coherent prediction models.
Research Areas
The SEIS prototype to be developed, will be used by the INTEGRAL and ENVISAT mission flight control operators (FCT teams) and integrates several key technologies:

  • Data Warehousing (decision support oriented database)
  • MOLAP Analysis (data exploration and correlation analysis reporting)
  • Artificial Neural Networks (general time-series forecasting)
  • Knowledge Based System (capture of domain experts’ knowledge)

While some of these technologies have already proven themselves on other domains of application (such as Data Warehousing and MOLAP Analysis – business domain), the latter (ANN and KBS) represent two blocks to be prototyped under the scope of the project.

Partners

Publications
References
  • Space Environment Information System For Mission Control Purposes. Statement of Work, ESA.
  • Elman, J. L. (1990). "Finding Structure in Time." Cognitive Science(14): 179-211.
  • Horne, R. B. (2000). Space weather parameters required by the users. Synthesis of user requirments - WP1300 and WP1400, Alcatel.
  • Kimball, R. and M. Ross (2002). The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide To Dimensional Modeling, Wiley.
  • Kimball, R., L. Reeves, et al. (1998). The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit: Expert Methods for Designing, Developing and Deploying Data Warehouses., Wiley.
  • Ribeiro, R., F. M. Pires, et al. (2002). Past & Future Of Knowledge Technologies: State of the Art and Roadmap for the Aurora Programme, Uninova/GTD - Cont. AO/1-4141/02/NL/LvH.
  • Schreiber, G., H. Akkermans, et al., Eds. (2001). Knowledge Engineering and Management: The CommonKADS Methodology, MIT Press.
Links and Acknowledgements
Uninova would like to thank the follwing institutions for their support inproviding data, thus making the SEIS project possible:

  • NOAA/SEC - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Space EnvironmentCenter(Anonymous FTP files are provided as a public service by the NOAA/SEC.Information presented is considered public information and may bedistributed or copied. Use of appropriate byline/photo/image credits isrequested. Space Environment Center, Boulder, CO, National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administration, US Dept. of Commerce)
    Web address: http://www.sec.noaa.gov
    FTP servers: ftp.sec.noaa.gov and ftp2.sec.noaa.gov
  • Kyoto World Data Centre for Geomagnetism(QL-Dst in near real time is being provided with the cooperation of Kakioka[JMA], Honolulu and San Juan [USGS}, Hermanus [RSA], Alibag [IIG] and CRL,INTERMAGNET and many others).
    Web address: http://swdcwww.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/
  • Lomnicky Peak's Neutron Monitor(PM Data is being retrieved from Neutron Monitor at Lomnický stít issupported by the IEP SAS in Kosice and by VEGA grant 1147).
    Web address: http://neutronmonitor.ta3.sk/datainfo.php
  • NNG - Near-Earth Navigation and Geodesy(Near-Earth navigation and geodesy activities are carried out by a teamwithin the Navigation Support Office (OPS-GN) at ESOC).
    Web address: http://nng.esoc.esa.de/
  • SIDC - Sunspot Index Data Centre(SIDC, RWC Belgium, World Data Center for the Sunspot Index, RoyalObservatory of Belgium. Data (1918-2004)).
    Web address: http://sidc.oma.be/index.php3
  • SOHO - Celias/MTOF/PM Sensoring data(CELIAS/MTOF experiment on the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)spacecraft. SOHO is a joint European Space Agency, United States NationalAeronautics and Space Administration mission).
    Web address: http://umtof.umd.edu/pub/
  • NOAA/NGDC - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/NationalGeophysical Data Center(Sunspot minima and maxima data available from the National Geophysical DataCenter (NGDC), located in Boulder, Colorado, is a part of the US Departmentof Commerce (USDOC), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS)).
    Web address: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/
  • Space Weather Technologies - SpaceWx(SOLAR2000 Research Grade historical irradiances are provided courtesy of W.Kent Tobiska and SpaceWx.com. These historical irradiances have beendeveloped with funding from the NASA UARS, TIMED, and SOHO missions).
    Web address: http://www.spacewx.com/
  • Wilcox Solar Observatory - WSO(WSO is supported by ONR, NASA, and NSF, and directed by Prof. P.H.Scherrer).
    Web address: http://quake.stanford.edu/~wso/wso.html
  • ESOC/ESA - Flight Dynamics products(We thank ESOC for making available INTEGRAL and XMM Fligh Dynamics datafiles - Used under the scope of the SEIS project only.)
    Web address: n/a
  • Lasco CME List(This CME catalog is generated and maintained by NASA and The CatholicUniversity of America in cooperation with the Naval Research Laboratory.SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA).
    Web address: http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/

UNINOVA wishes to thank Daniel Heynderickx (D.Heynderickx@oma.be) fromBIRA - Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (http://www.oma.be/BIRA-IASB/)for his colaboration in the project, which allowed the use of BIRA's SpaceWeather and S/C charging effects models contained in the SPENVIS package



Apoio FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia no âmbito da Unidade de Investigação CTS - Centro de Tecnologia e Sistemas, referência UIDB/00066/2020