Description:

In the fall of 2020, Congress unanimously passed, both in the House and the Senate, the Promoting Research and Observations of Space Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow (PROSWIFT) Act, signed into Public Law: 116-181 in October 2020.

The PROSWIFT Act states it is the policy of the United States to prepare and protect against the social and economic impacts of space weather, and we should do so by engaging all sectors of the space weather community, including academia, the commercial sector, end users, and international partners.

In accordance with section 60601 of the PROSWIFT Act, NOAA established the first ever Federal Advisory Group to advise the Office of Science and Technology Policy Space Weather Operations Research and Mitigation (SWORM) Subcommittee. All 15 non-governmental representatives of the Space Weather Advisory Group (SWAG) were appointed by the SWORM with 3-year terms beginning on October 1, 2021.

The PROSWIFT Act directs SWAG members to receive advice from the academic community, the commercial space weather sector, and space weather end users that will inform the interests and work of the SWORM. 

The PROSWIFT Act states the first order of business for the SWAG is to conduct a comprehensive survey of the needs of users of space weather products to identify the space weather research, observations, forecasting, prediction, and modeling advances required to improve space weather products. The survey shall:

1. Assess the adequacy of Federal Government goals for lead time, accuracy, coverage, timeliness, data rate, and data quality for space weather observations and forecasting; 
2. Identify options and methods, in consultation with the academic and commercial space weather sectors, to advance the above goals; 
3. Identify opportunities for collection of data to address needs of space weather users;
4. Identify methods to increase coordination of space weather R2O2R; 
5. Identify opportunities for new technologies, research, and instrumentation to aid in understanding, monitoring, modeling, prediction, and warning of space weather; and 
6. Identify methods and technologies to improve preparedness for space weather.

The SWAG kicked off the survey at the first meeting on December 1, 2021 and agreed to the survey approach and sectors to be included at the March 2022 meeting.   

Critical to the success of the user survey is valuable input from the community. In this session, an overview of the SWAG and a status report on the development of the user survey will be given by the SWAG chair and appropriate SWAG sector leads.  A discussion will follow and the community will have the opportunity to provide input.