As part of a risk reduction effort for the NOAA GOES program, we have conducted two research tasks aimed at improving forecasting of space weather effects caused by solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs). One of these tasks is to quantify CME morphology and its impact on forecasts of CME or shock arrival at Earth, and to determine if measures of CME asymmetry near the Sun can be used to objectively improve forecasts of geomagnetic storm activity. The second task is to determine the optimal measures of event speed to be used as inputs to models for predicting CME or shock arrival at Earth based on solar observations. We report on the results of these tasks, and we present recommendations for operational use to provide the best possible space weather forecasts.